Courtesy photo

Tucked behind 3061 S. Washington Blvd. in Ogden is a garage brimming with magic. For those who grew up dreaming of enchanted toy stores that only exist in films and books, the Wonderful World of Trains may be the key to fulfilling your childhood dreams — at any age.

The store in the front building is endearingly stuffed and overflowing with boxes of model trains, railroad tracks, figurines and miniature traffic signs and buildings. The shelves are crammed with boxes of history in the form of wooden train sets, electric trains, boxcars, slotcars and more. The heaps and piles of cluttered trains create a feeling of endless possibility, as if your next train might spill from the shelves into your hands of its own volition.

Dale Spaulding, the owner of the Wonderful World of Trains, started trading and selling model trains in 1971 when he was 21. He borrowed $125 from his dad to start the business and “bought four train sets from the wholesaler in Salt Lake.” After his first four sales, he went and bought more. He then opened his shop in Hooper until the oil embargo prompted him to move to Ogden, where he bounced between 23rd and 29th streets before buying his current storefront on Washington Blvd. in 1981.

Spaulding believes the lasting charm of model trains lies in their ability to inspire creativity. When toying around with tracks and layouts, people can decide what world they want to build. They are given as much freedom as their imagination and table measurements allow.

“Do what you like. It’s your railroad,” Spaulding said. “The only problem you have is negotiating real estate.”

According to Spaulding, this “real estate” ranges from the amount of basement dedicated to the hobby to futuristic and space-efficient layouts. He remembers one house he visited where the man’s railroad layout lowered from the ceiling on a pulley system powered by an ancient laundry motor. Another design, which Spaulding has in the front of his store, is affixed to an old closet door that has been removed from its hinges and lays horizontally. If you glue everything down correctly, Spaulding said, “you could put that door back up, just without the rolling parts.”

Spaulding encourages imaginative and innovative ways of building. He believes model trains “give you a chance to have a little fun.” Building with these toys and models inspires a sense of accomplishment, and tinkering around helps kids and adults explore the hobby’s many layers.

For Spaulding, model trains have opened doors. “You learn about carpentry, electricity, this and that. Then my mother gave me a book about real trains, and that opens up the historical part of it. As I got older and into the business, I got interested in the business history of it all,” he said.

While model trains may seem like an outdated form of entertainment, Spaulding said, “There are so many different layers to it, and that’s the thing that keeps it fresh. When you get bogged down in one area, walk away, go do something else, roll it around in your head and come back to it.”

Spaulding’s passion is contagious as he shows guests around his store and museum. Unlike the layouts that he grew up with, his favorite of which resided in the basement of Downtown Ogden’s George A Lowe Hardware Store, Spaulding wants his railroads to be accessible.

He will ask visitors if they want to “walk his dog” before showing them a button on the switchboard for his “Ultimate Lionel Layout from their 1957 Catalog.” He has each switch, nozzle and button labeled and graciously allows kids to play with the setup. He shows guests how to load barrels into a truck, send wooden logs through a wood-cutting building that spits out chopped planks, and use a magnetic crane to move metal cylinders between containers.

The buttons Spaulding kept as a kid are out in the open for guests to experiment with in his museum. The storefront has a series of boxes with stickers declaring “Yes You Can!” Spaulding said that these stickers are meant to encourage kids and their curiosity.

“I do a lot of train shows around here and around the West Coast, and every word out of a mother or father’s mouth is ‘No, You Can’t,’ so we lowered the price on the train sets,” Spaulding said. This strategy assuages parents’ concerns about their kids messing around with the trains and encourages kids to start testing them out as long as they are respectful.

When he was a kid, Spaulding desperately wanted to play with the layout in the hardware store’s basement. His mother would park him downstairs while she did her shopping, content that a young Spaulding would never wander away from his precious trains. He was too transfixed by the layout of Ogden in miniature form, guarded from his curious hands by a picket fence perimeter.

The prized layout in his museum is a recreation of this layout, which he calls “Ogden from a 7-year-old’s perspective.” As Spaulding guides guests through this layout, he inspires a newfound appreciation for Ogden’s history. Landmarks they have grown up under, including the Del Monte Water Tower and Farr’s Ice Cream Shoppe, have never felt so tangible.

It is easy to pass these pieces of history without a second thought in their life-sized form. But in this thorough recreation, Spaulding enshrines a bit of the town’s history in a dazzling and enticing toy format. Looking down at Ogden, represented by Spaulding’s kid eyes in 1956, stirs locals and visitors passing through alike. It makes these buildings and fixtures that fade into the horizon during everyday traffic and errands stand out. They are suddenly at your fingertips.

Spaulding gives a guided tour of his hometown through the miniatures. He talks about where his mother went to make ketchup in town and where he spent his days moon-eyed over different model railroad layouts. He confessed that, as a kid in Ogden, he would judge the businesses by how extensive their layouts were.

Spaulding also has the Motor Vu Drive-In represented in his layout, even though it no longer exists. He set up a little movie screen, which he admits is a bit more high-tech than the wooden boards the drive-in used to project movies onto, playing the “all-nighter” set of three movies the drive-in showed in 1956: “Love Me Tender,” “Giant” and “The Ten Commandments.” As Spaulding walks around, toying with the layouts, he leaves the movies playing for the imagined couples and families in the miniature, plastic cars parked in front of the screen, surrounded by billboards with historically accurate advertisements printed on them.

One piece of the setup that Spaulding claims he reimagined is a raised track on a semicircular hill in the layout that, at his 7-year-old height, he could never see over. He did not know what they kept in the valley beneath the raised land, so he pays homage to his hometown of Hooper in the valley. This section includes the family farm he worked on for 40 years with his father, farming until noon and then coming to work at his model train shop.

After working in this business for 53 years, Spaulding’s outlook remains upbeat. “We managed to have a good year 50 out of the 53 years we’ve been in Ogden,” he said. While this mindset indicates his personal and professional success, Spaulding’s definition of success is more philosophical. According to Spaulding, success is “when you’re happy with what you’re doing, and you have a good reason to get up every day and do something.”

The childlike sense of wonder Spaulding has nurtured in himself for years is apparent and infectious in his store. Throughout the shop, Spaulding has pieces of his childhood in the shape and size of these figurines. He has Marx tin trains, which were cheaper alternatives to Lionel, and American Flyer trains. He fondly refers to these tin trains lining the shelves above his layouts as “the first things you cut your teeth on.”

Spaulding never had an “aha moment” or realization that trains would be his lifelong passion, but “trains were always in the basement of my house. Sometimes they would get played with, and sometimes they would not,” he said. Even as his interest fluctuated during his teen years, Spaulding never relinquished his sets or the joy they brought him. This ceaseless joy and dedication confirms that model trains will not become a thing of the past – not as long as business owners like Spaulding are still around to cultivate passion in a new generation.

As closing time approached one particular day, a boy who had been wandering the store for hours reluctantly left for dinner. His mom called to thank Spaulding, who has been teaching the boy how to repair trains. Spaulding’s specialty is repairing 50- to 100-year-old trains, and he was happy to pass the knowledge along.

That’s not the only thing Spaulding passes on to his customers. He leaves them with a sense of accomplishment, wonder and awe, convincing them to never abandon childish passions or pursuits. Spaulding loves the Beach Boys, claiming their music inspired him to enjoy life. He took on their message of rejoicing in little things, and his charming store is dedicated to the pursuit of happiness and whimsy. In a world that is becoming increasingly online, these analog toys offer an alternative to the technology-saturated sources of engagement.

Any customers who wander into Spaulding’s store are given a unique opportunity to connect with something tangible and enticing that celebrates the historical. A few minutes in his store feels like returning to easier, kinder times. Wouldn’t it be nice?

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the name of the business owner.