Roving Camera #1: Abbotswood Junction

It's the era of the Austin Allegro, flairs and to quote celebrity photographer David Bailey, 'the age of the long haired bank clerk', as a 'Rail Blue' liveried Brush type 4 thunders through Abbotswood Junction with a Class 1 passenger express. Click the photo to enlarge!

This post hopefuly marks the beginning of a regular series of tasters of what I've been photographing for Model Rail magazine over recent weeks. Whilst at such an early stage it's not always known which issue the featured layout will appear in, it will hopefully give you an idea of some of the wonderful model railways coming your way Model Rail.

Last week I popped over Gloucester way to photograph Phill Bullock's excellent Abbotswood Junction - a super OO gauge layout based the real location just south of Worcester in that rarely modelled era immediately after the end of steam. Then much of BR was still steam infrastructure with manual signalling, old style track layouts, but with a fascinating blend of BR green and Rail Blue diesel hydraulic and electric traction often hauling a similar eclectic mix of stock

Abbotswood is a proper crowd-pulling decent sized 'watch the trains fly by' kind of layout, it having no station as such, so the joy is pure action and a complete antidote to the plethora of shunting layouts that dominate the exhibition scene.

But that’s enough from me - I don't want to give too much away, in time you’ll have to buy the mag and read the article and see he rest of the photos, but hopefully the above photograph will give an indication as to a great layout Abbotswood Junction is.

I'll update this page when it's known which issue the layout wil appear in.

• Visit the real Abbotswood Junction http://www.trainspots.co.uk/locpage.php?ts_number=1038 
• Visit Model Rail here