Railway to return by demand

The window display that won the best-dressed shop window contest at the Bramley Apple Festival has proved so popular it will return at Christmas.

Mr Graham Goff, of Goff’s Butchers, Queen Street, plans to restore the winning display, which featured a model train travelling round a miniature version of Southwell, to the window for the festive period.

The model is themed around the Bramley apple and features an orchard and a train carrying apples.

Mr Goff said: “I am going to make it a winter scene with snow and have Santa driving the train.

“I am also planning to replace the apples with pork pies and turkeys.”

The display took Mr Goff two weekends to create.

He used a picture of Southwell Minster and pictures of shop signs cut from leaflets from the town’s tourist information centre to make the model as realistic as possible.

He said: “Making model railways is my hobby and so I decided I would make one for the window display for the competition.”

Mr Goff left the window display in place for an extra week because of requests from customers.

He said: “It has been amazing. I was going to take it down after the competition but people kept coming in and asking if I could leave it and someone rang up and said they had family coming over from America and they had told them all about the train so could I leave it there so they could see it.

“It has been especially popular with children who have been coming in and having a go with the controls, speeding the train up and slowing it down.

“On Friday I had a customer come in with some black and white model cows. He said because we were a butchers we should have some cows in the fields.”

Mr Goff said because he had won the competition two years in a row he planned to buy a trophy to give to the organisers of the Bramley Apple Festival that could be awarded to the shop with the best window display each year.

He said: “This year all the traders made a real effort.”

The display will return to Goff’s next month.