Great Waterton/Behind the Scenes

Television Series
Great Waterton is a fictional town of the Island of Sodor, created by Sharon Miller It has as a station on the North Western Railway, situated north of the Skarloey Railway.

The town first appeared in the 2008 special The Great Discovery. Its last appearance was in the twelfth series episode Best Friends, which was also released in 2008.

Gauge 1 models
Great Waterton was first modelled in The Great Discovery. Three of the buildings in the town are based on buildings from the Beamish Museum in County Durham, England (Waterton Butcher's, P.L. Groceries and Reeves & Tola Cycleshop). Two sets of the buildings would be made, a worn down and damaged set and a restored set, the damaged buildings would only appear in The Great Discovery. Some chimneys from the damaged Great Waterton buildings are currently owned by prop dealership The Movie Reliquary.

Close-up models
Close-up models of some areas of Great Waterton were built to be used for scenes involving the close-up scale figures.

Stunt Models
For the scene where the trucks crash into The Water Works tower, a stunt wall made of resin would be made designed to break off the main structure, it wasn't fully attached to the building and would only be used in one scene. After filming the wall would be disposed off and found it's way into the hands of the prop dealership The Movie Reliquary who would cut up the wall into separate pieces to be sold off, various pieces are now owned by different users.

Drayton Manor Display
For a model display at Drayton Manor Theme Park the set for Great Waterton would be recreated for the engines to run on, the original buildings for Great Waterton from the TV Series would be reused for this display. Additionally. The Water Works Tower was originally to big to fit on the layout, so it had to be cut down. In 2023 the display would be cut up and the buildings repurposed for a new layout which in currently under construction.

CGI posters
In 2009, the series introduced Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) as a replacement for the show's long-standing live-action models. Although Great Waterton itself was not recreated from scratch in CGI, posters of the town can be seen on Knapford, Maron and Maithwaite which were created by Nitrogen Studios. The posters was "hand-sculpted" in Maya, a 3D animation and modelling software.