The Biggest Little Railway
by Michael McCullough
“A HOBBY GONE BAD,” ANTON SCHEIWILLER SAYS by way of describing Ultimate Trains, the model train store and summer tourist attraction he runs with his wife, Joan, in Nanton. Behind the brightly coloured storefront, just off Highway 2 about an hour south of Calgary, lies if not the largest then the busiest “garden railway” layout in North America, with 22 G-gauge trains running simultaneously.
Initially an HO-gauge hobbyist, Scheiwiller first bought one of the larger trains to deliver drinks to patrons at the bar of the Finto Motor Inn in Inuvik, N.W.T., which he owned for 29 years. After that he opened Ultimate Trains in Calgary, then relocated to Nanton eight years ago when the city rents got too high. Today location is less important, anyway; Internet sales account for half the store’s revenues, with orders coming from as far away as the United Kingdom and Germany. But Scheiwiller, 66, still gets a kick out of showing off his collection to the young rail buffs who have to be dragged away kicking and screaming: “We have a lot of satisfied customers who leave here in tears.”
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