Having spent his whole life going through the encyclopaedia of petty crime and having done time for most of them, career led petty crook Nobby 'The Magnet' Clifton retires to Grinding Halt, a little seaside town, to live with his brother George, sister-in-law Winnie and niece Thelma. Both George and Thelma are delighted he is going to live with them but unfortunately Winnie is not such an adoring fan. Having been told by George that there is a new man in town living at the old station master's house - with a large model railway he is building- something Nobby has always wanted, he decides to be neighbourly and pay a call. Imagine his shock when he discovers that this new resident in Grinding Halt is none other than Mr Pugh a newly retired prison warder and one of Nobby's adversaries from the past. After this initial shock and bitter disappointment that something of this magnitude should happen to him destroying at a stroke his dream of a brave new world Nobby fights back any resentment he might feel in order to ingratiate himself with the owner of the biggest and the best model railway he has ever seen, little realising that Mr Pugh is actually quite happy to make friends with this unlikely blast from the past. They are drawn together - two sparring partners from their previous professional lives - in order to combat the pressures from the unknown in a society that neither have had much experience with, both having spent most of their lives, admittedly for different reasons, in a prison environment cut off from the rest of the world.