FACTFILE
NAME: Oakhurst Town
SCALE/GAUGE: 7mm scale/33mm/ScaleSeven
SIZE: 14ft x 2ft
ERA/REGION: 1880s/South Eastern Railway
LAYOUT TYPE: Fiddleyard to terminus
Readers with long memories may remember my ‘Oakhurst’ S7 layout based on the South Eastern Railway in Kent in the 1880s, which featured in the BRM Annual for 2009. Having appeared at 20 shows between 1998 and 2008, the layout had eventually Come to the end of the road; at 25ft x 3ft, it was heavy and cumbersome for basically one person, and so was retired to the garage.
Around 2014, I started to fancy the idea of a compact exhibition layout, which might be easily transportable without needing to hire a van, and could re-use the stock and buildings from ‘Oakhurst’ into which I had put many years of work. I was able to measure up the capacity of a Skoda Octavia estate car to which I had access at the time to assess what might fit, eventually purchasing the same model myself. Having decided all was viable, I stiffened the sinews and summoned the blood and set to dismantling ‘Oakhurst’, preserving as many items as I could for re-use, down to the fencing and dummy point rodding.
First steps
After suitable thought and sketching, a very simple layout seen in the accompanying photographs was devised; whereas ‘Oakhurst’ had been based on a real station
