Portsea Men's Shed lights up young faces as they donate toy trains to St Luke's Church and Manor Infant School

The Portsea Men’s Shed, a kitted out community space where men can enjoy practical hobbies such as carpentry, has donated the outcome of a skilled project to create six shiny trains for local tots, to St Luke’s Church, based in Southsea, and Manor Infant and Nursery School, in Fratton.

Located in the Wickham Street Car Park, the group is open on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings from 9:30am, carrying out handicraft projects in the shed as part of the Men’s Shed Association, which operates over 700 shed’s in the country.

‘It’s a place for men to go to have companionship and some purpose in life, when you retire or you’re on your own or not working, you tend to get lonely,’ said Andy Pottinger, founder and chairman of the Portsea group.

Now with 35 members, Andy says the Portsea Men’s Shed is becoming increasingly popular with locals, and as a result they have formed an alliance with the Southsea based church, St Luke’s.

Andy added: ‘We’re becoming more and more popular. We do lots of things for community projects as well as personal projects like dollhouses for our granddaughters. Having community projects does give us a bit more focus and purpose.’

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Each model took train builders and seasoned members of the group, Garry Shipp and Michael Weyman, a month to make, handing over their creation to the church on Monday 13 February.

‘I hope that it will give them a lot of joy,’ added Michael.

Rev Annie McCabe, vicar at St Luke's Church, said: ‘We've built a relationship with the Portsea Men’s Shed and we saw that they’d done one of these for somewhere else and they were kind enough to make one for us.

‘It will make such a difference, we have lots of children and families involved in the church, but particularly we have a thing called Tots in Tow on a Tuesday between 10-11:30 and there will be some very very excited young ones who can enjoy this when we start up again next week.’