Given half a chance, Valda Jackson says she could spend another six months "finishing" her latest, and most ambitious piece.

The sculpture of a steam train with driver on the footplate has already taken a year of hard work, but, like any perfectionist, she feels there is still room for improvement.

The work began life as a relief drawing, before being transferred to clay in her studio at Spike Island.

More than 1,000 bricks have been used

It is held together on a brick wall frame but as the bricks are just 11cm wide Valda had to calculate how thick she should have the clay before it started cracking or falling off.

She received the commission after one of the managers at Newport Railway Station fell in love with a piece called Thoroughbred Mare and Foal which Valda made for an old people's home in 1995.

The Newport commission had no strings attached regarding interpretation, leaving Valda free to make the piece as she saw fit.

In order for it to be noticed, Valda decided to go big.

"It's the biggest piece of work I've done so far. I wanted to get as much detail in as possible," she told the website that loves Bristol.

The next phase is for the piece to be fired to bake the bricks hard, ready for a life outdoors.

At 30ft by 9ft, the sculpture is well beyond the capabilities of the kilns used by artists at Spike Island but fortunately Ibstock Bricks, of Almondsbury, has stepped in to help.

It will take the work to its factory kilns where thousands of bricks are baked in one firing.

When the work is fixed on a wall at Newport, it should provide an unusual talking point for commuters waiting for a connection.