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Jason Shron - now an Observer / Guardian feature (!)


phil gollin
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Further to the thread entitled "Jason Shron makes cover of Model Railroader", he's got a part in an Observer/Guardian feature on the odd things people do with their basements ;

 

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/aug/30/truly-madly-deeply-meet-the-people-turning-their-basements-into-secret-fantasy-worlds

 

He is becoming a media star

 

"When Jason Shron and his wife, Sidura, were house hunting in 2007, the Canadian model-train-seller would always head to the basement before viewing any other room. In fact, Shron had only viewed the basement of his current family home when he told his estate agent he’d purchase the property: provided Sidura liked the upstairs, he was ready to go. Shron needed the perfect basement because, for nearly 30 years, he had dreamed of building a life-size replica of a 1970s Canadian VIA Rail railway carriage inside his house, the exact train that took him from Toronto to Montreal to visit his grandmother when he was a little boy.

 

Step inside Shron’s basement today and you will be greeted by a 200lb blue-and-yellow train door. As you pass through it, an MP3 player will hiss the sounds of air circulation accompanied by the squeaking of gangway connections. Inside the carriage there are rows of vintage reclinable red-and-orange-striped seats, luggage racks, a real VIA garbage can removed from a scrapped train and a metal sign instructing passengers that smoking is indeed permitted. What Shron couldn’t find on the scrap heap, he made. He printed out orange litter bags, custom-printed napkins and engraved wine glasses.

 

“The great thing was it ended up looking exactly as I’d envisioned it,” the 45-year-old says of his basement train, which took him four-and-a-half years to build and cost $10,000 (the scrapped carriage alone cost $5,000). “I fell in love with VIA trains from the age of two – I became madly obsessed, it’s all I would talk about, all I wanted.” Shron recreated the train that he took to visit family to tap into “that very warm, comfortable, positive energy” he felt as a child. “I get a little bit of that every time I go down to the train.”

 

Shron’s basement is an unusual thing, but it is perhaps a little more common than you’d expect. A number of people have created their own “worlds” underneath their homes. In late May, the listing for a Maryland mansion went viral after a Twitter user discovered a fake town inside the basement. The basement features cobbled streets, 15 shopfronts, fake flowers and real vintage cars. But even this isn’t unusual. More than a decade ago, a YouTube video documented the basement of John Scapes, an Illinois man who had built an 1890s street under his home." .......

 

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