Helix, Nolix, Ovlix and—Rectix?

The "rectix" on the M & M Sub.

I was visiting the website of Brian Keay’s great Wolverine Lynx model railroad when I came across a word I hadn’t seen before: Ovlix.

On Brian’s layout, an ovlix is a version of a helix that is in the shape of an oval (oval + lix equals ovlix).

Brian's "ovlix"

I immediately recognized the concept, since it is similar to the way trains traverse between the lower and upper levels on the Manitoba & Minnesota Sub.

On my layout, I also employ something that looks like his ovlix and does the job of a helix.

In my case, it goes around a 5 x 9 foot storeroom that also houses my upper and lower staging yards.

It’s like an ovlix, but larger. So maybe I can call it a rectix (rectangle + lix = rectix).

(Because the size of the room, I can't actually get far enough back to take a photo of the rectix. Plus, it is mostly hidden on one side and both ends.)

I think Brian is on to something, and maybe I am, too. In addition to the traditional helix (a circle of track that connects levels) and a nolix (where the track rises around the walls of a room, as on Bill Darnaby’s Maumee Route and Tony Koester’s NKP), we can now have words like ovlix and rectix.

They may not catch on as words of the year, like “post-truth” in 2016, “emoji” in 2015, and “vape” in 2014, but maybe they’ll take off in the model railroad world.