At Abingdon and Witney College on Saturday the 42nd AbRail Abingdon Model Railway Show took place. Over recent years this exhibition has been at the leisure centre.

This year they were at a new venue at the college with the exhibition spread between the reception area, canteen, and a row of classrooms.
The great thing about the exhibition is the dedication and enthusiasm of the railway modellers who create such wonderful models. This line is Göttingen Süd in Germany.

Thomas the Tank Engine and friends were at the fictional Sodor Island, a layout created by Abingdon and District Model railway Club.

There were about 10 stalls and 17 layouts at the show. Another layout by the Abingdon and District Model railway Club was Belgrave Road, Leicester. This grand station never attracted as many trains as needed and closed to passengers in 1962. But before that people from Leicester would have taken to train from here to Skegness for the summer holidays.

Oxfordshire Artweeks is an artists’ organisation that promotes the work of Oxfordshire artists with a county-wide May Festival. Throughout November and December some of the artists hold shorter exhibitions and there was one at St Ethelwolds House over the weekend.

The work of The Abbey Group, four artists living in Abingdon, was on display in the Garden Room.

On Saturday, Brian Eastoe, the tutor of the local woodcarvers associations, was doing a good job of guiding people into the Community Free Space to see the carvings. He joked that we would be allowed to leave once we had voted for our favourite three wood carvings, and signed the visitors book.

Wood carving was happening on the premises, and Brian, was looking to get as many opinions as possible on the recent works.

Some works took a huge amount of work and looked very cleverly executed. Others were simple with a few simple curves.

All was going well. We filled in our 1,2,3 on the slip provided, and wrote something in the visitors book, and were about to leave, but then out of the blue Brian said that Van Gogh was not a skilled painter, or something similar. My wife looked astonished and said she could not believe he had said that. A very robust discussion followed.