2. From Dust to Design: The Rebirth of the Cuspidor and Southern Railroad

My main interest in the railroad has always been scenery and buildings so operation was always going to take a back seat. This became especially apparent when our young neighbour A.J. declared an interested in the railroad and, especially operation. I showed him the controls and gave him several challenging switching scenarios which he destroyed in mere minutes.

With this in mind I decided to bite the bullet and rip up most of the last fifteen or so year’s worth of layout and start again.
The design brief was:
Make the layout larger using up the previously dead space.
Make it more operationally interesting (er, challenging for the young blighter!).
A.J..and his younger sister, Bella, have been helping in the re-construction. Bella is positively lethal with an electric drill and screwdriver!

So the wrecking ball came in and I’ve spent a few happy? weeks enveloped in clouds of dust and sawdust, running around picking up timber and supplies and rebuilding the fabled valley of Cuspidor, Colorado in the early 1930’s. The main, new and much more extensive station depot baseboard is now in place. Sadly the fabled Rio Bozo and falls have bitten the dust due to space and design considerations. These are due to be replaced later this year by the equally infamous Plughole Canyon and Lake, which anyone who is anyone hereabouts knows is the source for the Rio Bozo, fed by a mysterious underground river which may or may not become a feature…..

Major surgery was worked upon my feature mountainside, straightening it out along the wall and stitching in a new foot-wide section. Colouring the new plasterwork to match the original worked out surprisingly well, which was a relief. I had forgotten just how tedious major rock moulding work could be and was very happy to complete the wall. There will need to be a bit more such work as I progress and the townsite, opposite the mountain, is going to get serious reworking and surgery later on in the year to come too. I’m going to invest in a small air conditioning system to allow work to carry on during the summer. Even in darkest England, the loft can get pretty stifling in the summer months.

Right at this point (late January 2026) the priority will be obtaining and putting in all the new trackwork and just getting the whole layout reliably operational. After that I can get down to repairing the whirlwind damage that has been wreaked upon poor old Cuspidor.

Cuspidor Town is no more

Rear baseboard narrowed

Rock wall patched, now to match the paint!!

Paint matched – Phew!

Bella the carpenter

New depot baseboard goes in