Okay, thank you both @Henry and @Walter for your comments. They were the lead toward the right solution.
Here's what I did to make sure it's stable ALL the time.
- I used one folder (location) for all ORM CFCs. There used to be a "model" folder for each section. Sections are sibling folders under one root and share the same Application.cfc. I changed that to ONE root level folder for all CFCs, ie: /root/ormmodel
On the /root/Application.cfc, I adjusted the following code
<cfset application.mappings["/ormmodel"] = expandPath("/root/ormmodel") />
and
this.ormsettings= { cfclocation = ["ormmodel"], autogenmap = true, ... eventhandling="true" };
Notice the missing "/" in the cfclocation value.
On calling for model components, I changed the code from pub = new ormmodel.Pubs() to
pub = EntityNew("Pubs");
On an unrelated point, I've changed my components name to camelCase naming and avoided special characters like underscores and dashes.
I hope this would be helpful and save someone else hours of frustration and suspense.
Happy coding!