G-Scale model trains: Wes Easley’s collection chugs on at Oddfellows
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula News
Published: August 13, 2008
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula Times
Wes Easley didn’t really play with trains when he was a kid... he waited until he was an adult. Now Easley is hooked on the G-Scale models, and his setup at the Oddfellows took up the entire great room, where kids and adults alike couldn’t get enough of the miniature train experience.
“I’ve loved trains since I was a kid, but I didn’t get into G-Scale until about eight to 10 years ago. It started with a little train to go around the Christmas tree.” Then, noted Easley, “it just got worse.” As his hobby escalated his wife, Sandy Easley, would “come home from work and there would be more track, more trains.”
Even the city’s historic Depot is part of Easley’s collection: it took him about three months to build a 1/64 scale model of the structure, now naturally a pivotal destination for his collection of small trains. Friday’s setup included a line of vintage scale metal automobiles lined up as if they were waiting for their commuter owners to take them home once they arrived at the Depot Station.
Trains, Easley admitted, “are hypnotic,” watching them go around and around “like therapy” with a high relaxation quota.
So admired is Easley’s recreation of the Depot that “I think he might do the Oddfellows, Santa Paula California Oil Museum and Blanchard Community Library,” said Oddfellows Grand Noble Carlos Juarez, “the old library building.”
Easley, the Oddfellows Warden, said the train track laid out Friday was a little more than 200 feet long, although he has about 100 more feet at home. “You can set it up in all sorts of configurations” to show off the 45mm Garden Railway. “I like to keep everything Southern Pacific... they ran through here,” and Easley’s love of historical accuracy extends to his limited editions of Limoneira Company and Union Oil freight cars.
“Is that a new car?” asked Wes’ wife Sandy as he sat and watched his train set go round and round and round. “I don’t believe it!”
