Outside the entrance to the exhibition, miniature train rides were being offered by the City of Oxford Model Engineers.

Inside, the exhibition was spread across three buildings. There were more than 40 layouts on display, organised by the Abingdon and District Model Railway Club.

For some enthusiasts the fascination begins early in life and becomes a lifelong pursuit. Even for those of us who are not enthusiasts there was plenty of interest at the show.

There were also dozens of trade and other stalls. Pauline Hazelwood writes children’s books based on stories told to her by railway enthusiasts. She also has a model railway layout featuring Alice the Little Welsh Engine, from one of her books.

Some of the layouts have more going on than trains travelling. Under the arches of Blackfriars Bridge, for example, I wondered what story lay behind the man distracting the policeman.

One of the largest layouts in the Sports Hall was Dorehill St Stevens. There was a wide variety of railway trains and scenery, including a small drama between a VW Beetle and a tree, with an ambulance taking away an injured person.

Of local interest was a model of the Wantage Tramway as it was in the 1920s. The two-mile tramway closed to passengers in 1925.

The Live Steam Roadshow came to the Abingdon Model Railway Show for the first time in 2025 and has already booked to return in 2027. Their layout has been very popular because the trains are powered by real steam and visitors are welcome to have a go at driving a locomotive.

The Bottom of the Barrel model is presented inside a beer barrel and shows the brewing process at the Trent Brewery, complete with almospheric lighting.

The layout showing the cup for Best in Show was The Wolfstatt Alpine Railway, which featured some impressively long trains. As with all good layouts, the longer you looked the more there was to discover.

There’s an exhibition at the County Hall Museum called Abingdon 1945.

It begins with displays tracing the progress of the Second World War from 1939 to 1945, and shows how everyday life in Abingdon was affected by the conflict, with exhibits on gas masks, air raid shelters, evacuees, blackouts, rationing, Dig for Victory gardens, and women taking on manual work at the MG factory and on local farms.

The exhibition then looks at the celebrations that followed the end of the war, with displays on VE Day and VJ Day in 1945. Street parties broke out spontaneously on May 8th, with dancing under the County Hall, and one airman climbed up to kiss Queen Victoria’s statue in the Market Place. In the weeks that followed, street parties were organised across the town. Abingdon was decorated for a grand Victory Parade on 7th August, which included a Fleet Air Arm and RAF fly-past. There were more street parties after VJ Day on 15th August. (The photo above shows residents of Winsmore Lane at their VJ party, as reported in the North Berks Herald.)

After the war, freedoms returned: you could switch on all the lights in the house and leave the curtains open, have a radio in your car, release a racing pigeon without police permission, buy a large-scale map, or sleep in an uncamouflaged tent.

But recovery took time. Rationing continued for several years. Housing was in short supply, and Abingdon saw experimental steel prefabricated homes made — with seven-foot-low ceilings. Many women gave up the jobs they had taken on during the war, returning to domestic or clerical work, while men were gradually demobbed or returned from prisoner-of-war camps and found new employment.

The County Hall Museum is run by Abingdon-on-Thames Town Council.