thanks for the solution @astroanu I was still hoping for someone to explain how the model connection gets resolved at runtime though.

Hi. You can simply extend the used base Model class with a new one, and have the following inside it:

/**
* @return string
*/
public function getConnectionName()
{
    $databaseConnection = config($this->getConfigFileName().'.database_connection');
    if (!empty($databaseConnection)) {
       $this->connection = $databaseConnection;
    }
    return parent::getConnectionName();        
 }

Then you simply produce a function called 'getConfigFileName()'. This way you specify connection name for any implementations of this new Model extension class dynamically using config file(s).

Hope this helps.