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A driving instructor in Gloucestershire left out of work during the pandemic has launched a new business selling model trains.

Jill Stevens, who has run her own driving school in Ledbury and Hereford for the past 12 years, established her new venture after finding a forgotten bin bag of the collectables at her home in Newent during the national lockdown last year.

Ms Stevens put the items up for sale on E-bay and after selling all of the initial 20 she listed she is now working full-time on her e-commerce store on the site, Jill’s Trains.

After a period of operating from her spare room at home and sourcing more stock from auction houses, Ms Steven has now moved her company into a 350 sq ft unit at Space Business Centre in Quedgeley, near Gloucester.

Ms Stevens said the move to a business address would allow her to accommodate an increased range of products, including miniature trains, tracks and accessories made by toymakers such as Hornby, Bachmann, Playcraft and Wrenn.

"The business has been so successful that I needed somewhere bigger," she explained. “I’m still buying from auction houses and flea markets and I’m really enjoying it.

"I loved being a driver instructor but if somebody had said to me a year ago, I wouldn’t be an instructor, I would be selling model trains, I wouldn’t have believed them.

“My dad died a few years ago but I know he will be looking down at me and smiling because he was very much into trains and he would have found it amusing."