About Us

The idea of forming a model railroad club was presented to model railroaders and those interested in the hobby by Gordon Sylvester shortly after he opened his store, Funtimes Hobby and Cycle in Olds. Through Gord’s efforts a location was secured in the Didsbury Museum and a founding meeting was held Friday October 2nd, 2009 at 7:30pm.

The founding members were Kevin Arbuckle, Didsbury; Ian Langham, Didsbury; Rick Astle, Olds; Gordon Sylvester, Lacombe and Randy Nail, Carstairs. At our first meeting we were introduced to the space we were allotted and began to organize our efforts to develop the space.

We began our club layout by building some walls to define our space and developing a basic track plan which would incorporate a portion of the town facing the railway's right-of-way. Work then progressed to the building of bench work and eventually the laying of track.

We completed the bench work and laying risers, plaster cloth, cork roadbed and track to form the initial loop by June 2011. We ran our first train around our newly completed loop in June 2011 and began working to improve power by completing our under table power bus and adding more track feeders.

We were ready to showcase our fledgling railroad during the Mountain View Arts Festival on October 1st and 2nd, 2011. The festival was a success with many of those attending enjoying the opportunity to run the train. We are now ready to move forward with landscaping and fine detailing of scenes and updating our power system to accommodate Digital Command Control as well as Direct Current operations.

In the fall of 2011 the club moved forward to take the reins and organize the 2012 Olds Model Train and Hobby Show. The show February 25th, 26th, 2012 held in the Frank Grisdale Hall Gymnasium of Olds College was a major fund raiser for the club and allowed us to move forward with our development plans. The 2013 show and expanded 2014, 2015 and 2017 shows were successfull. In 2018 we moved the show to a new location and a new date as cost became a factor. The Mountain View Model Railroad Club now sponsors our Model Train and Hobby Extravaganza in Carstairs, AB in the Curling Rink at the end of May. We are now entering into the planning of Carstairs 2020 May 23rd and 24th, 2020.