Trains: spiral elevators

Make your train go up/down using a 48m x 48m spiral

Step 1: Pick the location

In this guided example, we'll spin around a game decor, but you can safely create your spiral in the middle of nowhere.


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Centered foundation
Place a foundation at the center of your soon-to-be train elevator.


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Centered checker
Optional: you can create a 4x4 square to check you're correctly centered.
Tip: Place a Walkway to adjust the outer foundation position more precisely.

Step 2: Place guiding materials

Create a vertical axis on top of your centered foundation. Then remove one in two foundation.


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Pick a rotation direction
Place a Walkway on the side of a foundation, making sure you rotate left/right each time you go up/down.


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Resting arms
Place 2 Foundations next to each Walkway you just added.

Step 3: Place the rails

Add 8m x 2m Ramps at the edge of each of each resting arm.


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Help rail
Use a first straight rail stopping in the middle of the first Ramp.


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Bends
Place the turns by positioning the end edge of the Rail 1m away from the center of the Ramp going out of the spiral's center.


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Repeat.

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Last bend
You can place the last Rail end edge at the center of the last Ramp or at the center of the Foundation beneath depending on where your Rail goes next.

Step 4: Polish

You can now remove all the unwanted Foundations and replace the Ramps by Up Corner Ramp 8m x 2m if you will.


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Final check
Give a look from different places to make sure everything is well aligned


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Test
Confirm everything works as expected by adding a small Train to it.

Notes and tips

This guide provides the steps to create the smallest spiral possible using vanilla (unmodded) game content on update 4 of the eary access game (last tested with v0.4.2.10).

It is possible to create larger spirals. You can suggest and ask for other guidance sizes in the comments.


If you want to use any Wall or different Foundation, make sure to place them before adding the Rails to avoid losing time removing and re-adding any object.



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Q&A

Answers to questions from the comment section will be written here to help you everyone finding them without having to get through all of them!

Changelog

• 2022/04/28: set guide language to English
  
• 2021/07/30: polishing a little
  
• 2021/07/25: improve layout for mobile devices
  
• 2021/07/25: guide creation

[Azaol]

💜
Really appreciated, thank you for the comment!

[ath0rus]

its 2025 and this guide is still relevant and is the best I found

[ultrakiller]

my parabens your craft

[Azaol]

Thanks for the suggestion! I might just add a section for it in my next guide whenever I get into it =D

[really legendarier Sage]

next guide you should do hyper tubes

[Azaol]

Thanks!

[zkrotzer2014]

that look's cool

[Elganif]

This was the method I used to build my helix for lifting water to my nuclear plant. It works great and looks great.

[redesiigner]

Hey, thanks for your guide. I'll always build two inside another for two way traffic :)

[ramonpontes]

Hey, nice setup. It is really useful specially when you need to elevate fluid resources (better than using pipes and pumps)

About conveyor belts, I don't think it would be effective to use them in a circle shaped way. It would be best if you just use conveyor lifts, and link them together until the top.

For pipes, you can just put the pipe supports on the wall, and adjust them to the vertical position, so no curves are really necessary.