A decades-old model railway shop in Wakefield has finally hit the buffers with the owner admitting the hobby just doesn't have the pull it once enjoyed. Stuart Buckley, owner of the Wakefield ...

Our (model trains) range in price from $10 to thousands of dollars.” Powell resident Jim Simpson is a regular customer at Dan’s, and a lifetime model-train enthusiast.

A contagious love for the model railways would extend to both Phillip and his mother Marguerite, whose love of the shop will see her return behind the till next year at 91 years-old.

Waterman said he he was seeing more young people interested in model railways than ever before. "I'm 77 years old, and for 57 years of my life I've heard that model railways are dead," he said.

It claims to be the UK’s biggest model railway shop, attracting visitors from across the world, with celebrity fans including Jools Holland and James May.

When the Warley Model Railway Exhibition due to be held at the NEC in Birmingham was cancelled in January "for the foreseeable future", the organisers said they believed the pastime to be "alive ...