September 2021

New beginnings

Stop Press

History Archive of all previous posts from the beginning of time!

Reality

I try to include family and friends in the life of Cuspidor and you’ll find references to them below. I endeavour to fit them tongue-in-cheek into the most suitable positions, such as our dear friends Malcolm and Cathy who once treated us to a disastrous grand weekend tour in Derbyshire. In the spirit of never letting a good turn go unpunished I conceived of them running the world’s worst bus tour company. I enjoy creating little vignettes that bring the viewer into my strange little world. Building Cuspidor is a long term retirement project and I will try to keep adding to the story.

My World

The little known Rocky Mountain town of Cuspidor lies at an elevation of 8,639 feet somewhere between the Uncomphagre and San Juan ranges. It sits in the Rio Bozo valley amidst hard granite cliffs. It’s pretty hard to find nowadays as the valuable metals ran out in the fifties and people mostly just drifted away leaving what was a once prosperous town to just fade into obscurity. Diehard exploring types have been known to stumble across it when following the old abandoned narrow gauge railroad line through the brush or hiking along the Rio Bozo up to the fabled Plughole Falls.

Here we view it in 1932 at the end of the glory days but while the railroad still ran serving the almost played out gold, silver and lead mines.

The upper town of Cuspidor sits on a series of steep, narrow switchback roads reminiscent of Jerome AZ. A fairly recent addition is the magnificent stone City Hall and Courthouse built in 1918, at great public expense, by over ambitious and short sighted city fathers.

Notable buildings include the Golden Cuspidor saloon and hotel up on the bluff, the aforementioned City Hall, Miss Anna’s Pleasure Palace, the Miner’s and Cattlemen’s Association Hall and a magnificent F W Woolworth store. Dan Webb’s auto repairs does a good trade thanks to the awful roads and Miss Sarah’s little car is seen there rather frequently causing tongues to wag. The Lady’s Temperance Group, if not protesting about miner’s and stockhands carousing and frequenting the saloon and Miss Anna’s on a Saturday night, often speculate that it’s about time young Dan did the right thing and popped the question. There are still some tiny miner’s shacks in and around the town along with a few old shops that struggle to compete with a Woolworth’s that won’t stay long once they check the turnover at head office. Below the town you can just see a corner of Wiggin Field where Captain JJ Wiggin valiantly tries to keep his old biplane flying with air circus shows and crop dusting duties.

Overlooking the picturesque Plughole Falls is Desport’s tiny diner where the occasional, intrepid tourist takes ham and eggs along with miners from the Rio Bozo Mine. The poor chaps up at the Devil’s Drop goldmine don’t get down there too often. Now and then you can see the Pritchard’s Intrepid Scenic Tours (PIST) charabanc approaching the view point, usually with their last passenger hurling herself out of the open window in a desperate attempt to escape.

The Cuspidor and Southern Railroad depot and yard bake in the summer sun and freeze in the winter along with everyone else (work in progress). many mines and related mining industries keep the old line rattling on. Enjoy.

My Musical Adventures

My other hobby - only for the brave: https://barrykingsbeer.bandcamp.com/releases

Tuesday, 21 September 2021

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.

Saturday, 18 September 2021

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.