Cuspidor & Southern Railroad 2021 Onwards

My freelance adventures in Colorado in Hon3. Buildings, scenery, details and character are my interests with operation well down my priorities. The layout is a scant 8x12 ft so compromises have been made to squeeze in the scenic and building work I love. Influenced by Allen, Olsen and Furlow along with Earl Smallshaw, John Swanson and latterly Sam Swanson. I make no claim to authenticity and retain my tongue firmly in cheek while modelling. Any questions - just ask.

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, 10 December 2024

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

Monday, 2 December 2024

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.

Wednesday, 6 November 2024

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.

Monday, 4 November 2024

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!