Excitement at every turn
Inspired by Old Oak Common, but maintaining its own individuality, Steve Pike’s layout is an example of maximum interest in minimum space.
You may think you recognise the location of Steve Pike’s depot layout, but you’d be wrong. While it has been inspired by Old Oak Common in west London, it’s actually called ‘Seven Ash’ after a small village in Somerset close to where Steve lives.
“As there are bound to be some small inaccuracies, I decided against calling it ‘Old Oak Common’ so that if I was challenged about anything that wasn’t quite right, I could simply say it’s ‘inspired by’ rather than ‘based on’,” Steve admits. “That said, I’ve tried to make it as accurate as possible and it has even been exhibited at Old Oak when the depot had its [2017] open day.
Steve is like most modellers and had amassed a large collection of locomotives, in this case 60 carefully weathered and renumbered ‘Westerns’, ‘Hymeks’ and ‘Warships’, along with Type 2 and Type 4 diesel-electrics. Steve could have opted for the ‘traditional’, linear diesel depot layout but he wanted something that would allow him to have as many as possible on display at the same time. And what better than Old Oak Common’s open-air turntable?
You might think having a layout that is little more than a turntable would be boring to operate, but Steve and his helpers have found ways of keeping things interesting.
“I wanted to create something that would allow me to have as many models as possible on display at the same time”
“We like to set ourselves challenges,” he says,” such as moving certain locomotives onto certain tracks around the turntable. The key is to always keep something moving.
“The turntable can be quite hypnotic for the viewers, especially as there’s an element of suspense involved because they don’t know which track it will stop at!”
What makes ‘Seven Ash’ really capture the Old Oak look is Steve’s fleet of locomotives, where PRE-TOPS BR blue rubs shoulders with very faded green or Western Region maroon of the 1960s and 1970s. All have been renumbered and weathered in a quiet office at work during his lunch breaks.
Says Steve: “Each one would take about a fortnight, but that’s only doing an hour a day, five days a week, so if I had more free time I could have got them completed much faster. I’ve also added a crew.”
TABLE HOPPING
Although the layout looks simple and is only a 7ft by 10ft piece of plywood with 2in by 1in bracing, Steve has been able to include a lot of details to keep people interested. One of the smaller details for viewers to
“There’s an element of suspense involved as viewers don’t know which track the locomotive will stop at!”
“If you look at any photographs of Old Oak Common in the period, there are fuel barrels everywhere – I know there are at least 100 at ‘Seven Ash’”
find are the three cats who lived at Old Oak Common. One is called Dipstick (because he always used to sit under the warm locomotives andget covered in oil). Then there’s a ginger cat called Marmalade (for obvious reasons), and one who always gets tangled among the workers’ feet, causing them to have accidents – the result being that he has a name we can’t repeat in polite company!
“As well as the cats, I’ve tried to make the depot look as realistic as possible by filling it with fuel barrels. If you look at any photographs of
Old Oak Common in the period there are barrels everywhere – and I know there are at least 100 at ‘Seven Ash’.”
This realism is extended to the backscene. The industrial feel Steve has given it looks spot on and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the buildings are mock-ups of the ones surrounding the depot In reality though, these are pictures from
a German company that Steve found online, and the ‘sky’ is from Gaugemaster.
CLUBBING TOGETHER
“i’d like to thank members of the Somerset Railway Modellers Club – I wouldn’t have been able to complete the layout without them.”
It’s worth considering ‘Seven Ash’ as an elaborate display piece that also works as a layout. Steve has been clever with his design, maximising the excellent models on display that he wants to showcase, while saving space wherever possible. Don’t be surprised to see similar layouts more regularly in the future.