Salida, or Orestod, depending on which track you enter town on is where the Rocky Mountain Central and Colorado Pacific interchange.  Actually, Salida is the interchange town and Orestod only has industries to service.

The above photographs are not really in Salida but are part of the mountain and tunnel that the train goes through between Salida and Pueblo.  The top photo is a scratch built abandoned mine with a collapsed tunnel entrance in the rock hillside.  The lower two photos are taken through access/viewing portals in the facia.  The interior of the tunnel is completely detailed using multiple castings from Woodland Scenics tunnel molds.  The left shot exits to Salida/Orestod and the right brings you to Pueblo/Kremmling.

Salida/Orestod has a long way to go as you can see.  The trackage is in, except right at the turntable.  Most of the industries are cardboard mock-ups but that doesn't stop us from switching them during operating sessions.  The first two photos are Salida, the third is an overall shot from Orestod looking back towards Salida an the last shot is the industries at Orestod.  The main challenge here was that Salida is the interchange town between standard gauge and narrow gauge, but the outside track is the line between Pueblo , Salida and Leadville while the yard is on the other side of both mainlines.  I solved this problem by installing crossovers at both ends of town.  The track points at the bottom of the upper left picture is part of one of these.  The other end of town required the use of a curved turnout to make a crossover work, lower right photo, as the track passed over the Arkansas river.  OK, that didn't sound too bad.  But wait,  this make the entire town a reversing section.  DCC to the rescue, by using a separate booster and a Digitrax PM-42 for Salida/Orestod that is set for auto-reversing and the lead tracks entering town on a non-reversing booster DCC takes care of the problem.  The only gotcha is the slight possibility that two different trains cross these zone boundaries at opposite ends of town at the exact same time causing the auto-reversing to not know which way to go.  So far this has been a non-problem, so I'm not worried about it.  I'd also like to point out the diamond in the lower left picture.  I know its hard to see but that is narrow gauge crossing standard gauge.  I simply took a standard gauge, code-70 crossing and with a little hacking moved one rail in to make it narrow gauge.

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