Late Autumn 2025 Progress at last!

Trackwork gets a much needed overhaul.

After yet another summer away from the loft, I'm back in the harness again. I've been working to properly electrify the depot sidings and upgrade the switches.  Switch machines and controls are being installed to facilitate something akin to proper operation. I'll be very glad when I've finished as I loathe trackwork more than anything on the layout! 

I was waiting on a new capacitance discharge unit, which arrived today, so will hopefully have the switch machines live tomorrow. Then the fun can commence. The  turntable needs to be wired up but will not be motorized in the short term.

I put some simple ground cover over the bare boards and look forward to some proper modelling to follow.

Turntable end

Depot area

Mining district

Some new rolling stock arrives

Two much need stock cars.

I bought these on Ebay from a chap who is downsizing his layout, nicely made and decorated and they were a bargain. The beautifully finished piece of wood is my coupling alignment fixture and short test track. I've also started to finish all my unfinished rolling stock ready for proper operations.

Isabella Mining Co HQ. The story so far...

Having completed the gallery of the Isabella mine for my young friend, she decided she needed a full scale operation in Cuspidor and wanted to build a structure of her own too. I found some plastic wall components in my scrapbox that were marketed years ago by Roundhouse MDC. I believe they were probably made in Turkey and imported to the US, (you can see the Arabic inscription over the doorway in the shot below). They are beautifully moulded and I bought up a whole load of them some time ago and have used them in several structures since.  I managed to forget to take pics all during the build but here are a few and the nearly finished article, almost ready to go on the layout.

The basic shell, Bella helped me assemble it and painted it herself.

The fireplace which will eventually receive an amber flickering bulb.

Fireplace awaiting grate and fire and a window.

The structure is complete with interior which Bella helped on and the yard develops.

Let there be light!!

Bella is seated at her desk beavering away, no doubt.

You can see the fire in the grate here, it flickers away most realistically, pity it will be quite hard to see when installed.

Some photos with the roof off

Real progress at last!

I've spent a couple of weeks tearing out what's left of my hair trying to fit crummy British made backscenes and have now, finally, managed it. It isn't perfect but it is going to have to do. If  only you could buy backscenes over here wider than 3 feet and taller than 15 inches...........

At least now I can start the proper work of ballasting and land forming so that I can resume the interesting part of the hobby.  The new, connected trackage is now tested and working pretty well, just need to get a switch for the turntable and then that can go in followed by installing and wiring the switch machines. Here are some pics of where we are now.

New trackage and backscene for Cuspidor depot -some progress!

Laying and wiring track has to be absolutely the worst job on the railroad and I loathe it. However I am making progress and can't wait to get it finished. Work under the baseboard is trying right now as my knee continues to collapse. Had it scanned yesterday and we'll see the consultant on Friday this week for the glad tidings. Here are some progress shots. The backscene is on its way after a couple of expensive false starts. It will be nice to get that sorted. This is where I'm at today 5th Feb 2025. Right now I think I need one more switch and motor to complete the trackwork. Next job is to join up track where I can and do the wiring including under baseboard switch machines. I also need to carve and repaint the tunnel portal that I had to destroy to relay the track in there.

The Isabella Mine is now almost complete

Bella comes to Cuspidor

I must confess to having received some assistance lately on this project. I've been giving guitar lessons to the daughter of our great neighbours who live just down the road.  Her name is Bella, she is 12 years old and like my granddaughters Jasmine and Darcie she is a live wire who just wants to dabble in everything from music, singing and acting to now, model railroads. So Bella assisted me in set dressing the mine galleries and now, naturally it has become the Isabella Mining Co. Next we will have her making a structure for the layout, I'm such a slavedriver! Stay tuned for progress reports.

Meanwhile back to the mine!

I built some scale sized lanterns for the mine, however scale sized light doesn't really work. Hey Ho! Live and learn. They consist of very small LEDs with a section of 1.5mm square plastic rod, drilled out and glued on. Then they were encapsulated in superglue inside a piece of shrink tubing and wired up to a 3 volt battery.

Work has carried on apace

You can see the holes drilled for the lamps

Bella started positioning her workers

A hoist derrick is being set up to haul out the spoil in the new test shaft

More progress down in the mine 

The mine structure is prone to a bit of warping due to the papier maché taking time to dry so I fitted a stabilising piece of wood, suitably disguised, to hold it together. Beginning to think I should have made the box from 2"x1". 

The "track is laid

Getting back to modelling

Extending  Cuspidor's mining industry

 After so long away I was looking for a gentle slide back in, so to speak. At the back of my mountain, facing my workbench I have a bit of wall, just some wooden boarding that is used for hanging stuff against. I decided to bring it into the layout by modelling a small portion of mine interior and insetting it into the wall. I'd worked up a rough plan of something similar several years ago and dug it out.

I made up a mine shaped box using strips of lath from an old wooden venetian blind.........

The box

Modified box with rock walls drying nicely

The rock is my homemade Sculptamold, just patching plaster mixed with shredded cardboard

Passage back to main mine

New, smaller entrance to shaft

More rock

Narrowed the shaft with more  mix

Mine track

I made some mine track from small strip styrene, mmm a work of art

Next steps:

I'll paint the rock and the track and  then work out how to add a floor texture with the rails embedded. I will install lighting and miners and details then see about putting it in the wall. 

 Progress is being made..........

I have spared my dear reader the agony of a blow by blow account of me up and down, in and out and under and above the baseboard replacing the old with the new. Take it from me you ain't missed much except for broken knuckles, much cursing and copious (and well deserved in my opinion) consumption of fermented grape juice. The new boards are much stronger than the old ones too.

 

The next task is to plot out the new, improved track layout and start to lay underlay then rails. Let joy be unconfined.......... After that the mystery of wiring the damn thing so it runs.

After a "looooong" hiatus the C&S rides again!

 The men with the sledgehammers move in!

"Some time has passed"  

What with Covid, a hip replacement and general dissatisfaction with running the layout the train loft has been sadly deserted except for a few amiable spiders keeping an eye on things.

My main interest being scenery and building construction, when building the layout I just assumed that laying and wiring track was a given considering my many outstanding abilities. Got that wrong...

The result being that the depot and yard areas never worked and contributed to my leaving the loft never to return. However here we are again and I'm determined to sort it out once and for all.  I need to get a steam on as a knee replacement op is soon to be on the cards (Oh deep joy) and I won't be ascending the loft ladder and ducking under the baseboard for a while.

I removed all the structures and scenery from the area (Olson's was particularly difficult to remove without damage but it came out in the end) and will cut out a replacement board that I can take downstairs and install/wire the trackage/switch machines etc when I find out how to do it properly. The cunning plan then is to install it on the layout, magically join to existing track and hey presto! a working layout.

Sadly my, once again, expensive American backscene prove to be problematic. It didn't stick well to the wall and expanded in places so I cut out the sky area and will replace that yet again and glue the rest down with a welding torch. That should sort it.

Meanwhile this is what the disaster area looks like today. Ho hum!

Wiggin Air takes off (er not quite).

My neighbour and ace model sculptor Sam presented me with an Airfix Stearman biplane kit after I said the old one had sustained irreperable damage and I couldn't find another. So I built it and looked at the finished model. Hmm it would be nice if the prop turned. Aaaagh!!  I turned up an old electric toothbrush motor that I'd saved and figured it could fit. Off came the motor and prop and carving started. I managed to drill the tiny propshaft with a micro drill in a hand vice. Some plane disassembling later I glued the shaft to the prop, the motor to the plane, threaded wires to the tail and set it on the layout. A 1 1/2 v battery did nicely and now it can be operated with a push button. The girls will love it. I added the sound from a real Stearman for this video. My bro in law Julian Wiggin is a retired Airline Senior Captain and always wanted to fly a Stearman - now he does, in Cuspidor!

Finishing touches to the new real estate

The Pastor's house and part of the hillbilly smallholding.

More scenic work (the best bit) on the centre space.

The piggery. The gate has just disappeared into the bottomless pit of small parts that every layout room has.

Pastor Kirk's manse.  He looks on as his wife supervises granddaughter Emily with the washing.

The story behind E. Crank Gas and Oil

 In the early years of the 20th century a young and somewhat eccentric traveller arrived in the fabled Cuspidor Valley, seeking to make his fortune. His name was Eli Crank. Sadly he found that all the fabulous mineral deposits had been claimed for miles around and he had to eke out a living driving a team of mules for a local haulage company.

One day as he grazed his team and took his lunch, he happened to notice a small, foul smelling pool nearby.  Bingo! He realised that there was oil here.  He dashed back into town, bought a map and logged a claim at the town hall. On the strength of his discovery, the bank granted him a modest loan and he purchased a pumpjack or nodding donkey, which he set up on the site to extract the black gold.  Luckily there was enough oil of high quality for him to repay the loan and earn a reasonable living until the well ran dry in 1921.  Being a careful character he had saved his money and set up a small oil and fuel distributorship on his claim and expanded that.  The redundant  pumpjack was left to moulder and parts can still be seen to this day rusting in the grass. Here we see it as it was in the mid '30s slowly giving way to Mother Nature.

Reality

A fellow modeller from Canada, who is a good friend of my mate Sir Graham, goes by the nom de plume of Eccentric Crank.  When I built my small diorama of a Petrol/oil supplier I thought I'd name it E. Crank in his honour. Recently I've been installing all my dioramas into the layout but had no room for a couple of them, this being one and the other was my little foundry.  I decided to insert a piece of board into the central operating well (seeing as I don't do any operating as such it was an obvious place to gain some real estate).  This has become the home of these two dioramas, plus a house for the church pastor.

I also had a tiny board with some rusted out, above-ground piping and equipment on it, which I placed next to the Crank's lot and thus a back story was born.  I've wanted to make a model of a pumpjack ever since seeing one working at Kimmeridge on the Dorset coast extracting oil from the extensive oil shales there and one would fit here just fine.

I built the pumpjack entrely from scrap and stuff lying around my workbench. I don't claim it to be accurate but it is in scale and looks the part. Good 'nuff.

This board is still work in progress and I'm landscaping as fast as I can.

The new real estate takes shape

Crank's with the foundry behind

The Pumpjack

The Pastor's house in the rear

Gone to sleep

Cuspidor Station Depot Building

 I finally re-engineered the depot structure.  It was made from an ancient  Atlas (Rico I think) plastic kit which I dismantled, cut down to fit my limited space between the tracks at Cuspidor Flats and re-assembled.  Almost complete, it still needs signage to be knocked up on my printer and a train order board.  I used to have a lovely little Grandt Line one but it has vanished like so many small bits and pieces over the years. The roof is made with Auhagen shingles, a bit coarse but available over here so it had to suffice.

On this end wall you can make out signs of the butchery I had to perform on the kit, however it won't be visible from the normal viewpoint so isn't an issue. Meanwhile Chief Conductor Cyrus Dibble rushes to get all the freight and luggage ready for the five o'clock train.

In its eventual position, ideally it should face in the opposite direction but a lot of detail would have been lost.  It isn't beyond the realms of possibility that the noted Colorado raiload architect Edward Finkel got the plans the wrong way round, that's Cuspidor for you, after all! Either way Cuspidor now has its depot which will be merged into the landscape pretty soon.  Fortunately I arranged the structure as a press fit onto its base and that will make for an easy installation.