Everyone thought Jason Shron would eventually outgrow his obsession with trains.

Instead, he went in a more Field of Dreams direction and built a life-sized chunk of a VIA train in his Thornhill basement.

“It’s something anyone can do with the right amount of craziness,” he says from his personal slice of 1976, complete with faux wood finishes. “You have to be obsessed. Four years and a mess in your basement, you have to be able to see what the end result is going to look like.”

A few things to know about Shron: He is 37, with a patient wife and three train-loving children. He owns a model train manufacturer. His first memory is being lost, at age 2, crying on a Toronto-to-Montreal VIA Rail passenger train. That’s when the obsession began.

“For me, being on the train is … this wonderful cozy comfy space, especially when the weather is terrible outside; it’s sort of this microcosm of comfort,” he says.

Shron loved playing trains, and at 12, he wrote to VIA, looking to buy a seat to bolster at-home realism. He was rejected, but later had success in the budget cuts of the ’90s, when many trains were taken out of service.

He studied art history at school, but abandoned work on his PhD (images of the 19th century railway in England) to create a model train business. When he bought his house in 2007, the main selling feature was the 9-foot ceiling in the basement: the perfect spot to build the blue and yellow coach he’d been dreaming of since he was a kid.

The problem is, when coaches are taken out of service most scrappers throw out the kinds of accessories Shron coveted — the carpeted luggage rack panels, the cheap plywood dividers, air vents. He collected bits and pieces before hitting the motherlode in 2010: a former VIA coach for sale in Moncton.

Originally built in the ’50s, Coach 5647 started its life as a CN passenger car, and later ferried Canadians across the country with VIA. When VIA faced budget cuts in the early ’90s, similar coaches were sold or leased out.

According to Shron, this coach was leased to a Montreal commuter service, came back to VIA, and was later sold to Rocky Mountaineer. It had been sent to Moncton for a refurbishment that never happened.

Shron paid “well under $10,000” for the coach, and some of his friends took a train east to help take it apart. A friend in a model railroad group just happened to be a freight forwarder — he gave Shron a good deal on shipping the parts back.

The basement has been in a state of chaos since 2008. The finished product (about 3 by 6 metres) is a trip back in time. The outside is wood, but the inside is identical to a late 1970s to early 1980s VIA train, with all the small details as well as a soundtrack of train noises Shron recorded on a recent trip. (A locomotive engineer friend immediately noted that the K5LA horn in Shron’s soundtrack was not used in 1980.)

There are stir sticks, garbage bags and blankets. A sign advises that spitting is not allowed. Another sign permits smoking. A blurry photo in one of the vestibule’s windows mimics the passing scenery.

He uses the train as his home office and lounge. He has a record collection where the bathroom used to be and some bottles of scotch on the top luggage rack. His children punch tickets, and his daughter especially loves wheeling the beverage cart down the aisle.

It is Shron’s favourite place. It is also the last home he plans to live in.

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He has already written a note inside the wall for the person who comes next.

“Dear contractor, I apologize for how difficult it has been to dismantle this train car. I have been making this up as I go along and I have made every mistake in the book. But I have had a lot of fun doing it!”