With the exception of a teenage into early adulthood hiatus where Scott Law put his model trains into boxes for “cars and girls and college and stuff,” the man has been devoted to the craft throughout life.

Please click the photo above for a slideshow.

Thirteen years ago he opened the Electric Train Shop on California Ave. in West Seattle, well before the area became a hip section of the city with upscale dining and skyrocketing rental rates.

Law was sharing a space with West Seattle’s liquor store and, about a year ago, it became clear he needed to find a new home. The liquor store made plans to move to a new location and Law’s landlord decided to split the space right down the middle. Law could have stayed, but there was no way he could afford the $6,000 a month rent.

He started looking with three critical elements in mind: ample parking, good foot traffic and reasonable rent.

Downtown Burien won.

Law reopened on July 30th at 625 S.W. 152nd St. and he says it was a good call.

“In the mornings I take a stroll around the neighborhood and I’m discovering Burien,” he said. “I’m enjoying this area; I like it a lot.”

The new Electric Train Shop has twice the square footage of the West Seattle spot for less money and, at least according to an hour long sample on a weekday, the foot traffic is working out. During that hour five model train enthusiasts stopped in (more from them later in the story) and at least five more just walking by couldn’t resist the temptation of coming in to peruse the massive selection.

Mike Mikelson is a customer,who came in to look at the latest in N-scale models (there are five different sizes of models), said he has been collecting since 1972.

“It’s good to have something back here,” he said. “It’s a long trip to most of these railroad-type hobby stores anymore.”

Another advantage to Law’s new spot is the relocation of a Boeing employee model train club that is coming to 153rd St. in Burien from Kent.

“Having a club with 50 members a block away, how can that hurt business?” he said.

In addition to a steady flow of customers, Law says he has a supernatural visitor.

“Before I moved in here I guess the last tenant they had was a guy that was going to open up an antique shop and he got all set up in here and two weeks before he opened he had a heart attack and died,” he said. “And his ghost is in here, his name was Harvey they tell me, and I can hear him creaking around at night and he hides tools on me."

“He’s here and he’s Harvey and I hope he likes what came to be here.”

Most of Law’s customers are in their 50s and up, but he sees an upsurge in potential train hobbyists thanks to the Thomas the Train toy craze. If his “train gene” theory is true, he should have customers for decades to come.

As for the allure of collecting model trains and building landscapes “from the dirt to the sky,” Law said there are many reasons.

“There are so many different aspects to it: there’s the history, there’s the modeling skills, there’s collecting, there’s the digital, state-of-the-art stuff now with wireless control,” he said. “It can be as technical as you want it to be or it can be as simple as 100 year old train mechanisms.”

“So there are a lot of different appeals and it’s really the whole world in miniature.”

For Electric Train Shop regular “John” (no last name given), it used to be about building and running trains, but anymore he focuses on collecting and trading.

Remembering how he got into trains in the 1940s, John said, ““It’s basically the baby boomer boys grew up with trains. That was the Christmas thing and when you were a kid you put the Christmas tree up and you put the train around the Christmas tree and the day after Christmas you went around to play with all your friends new trains.”

And then there’s Ron Young, a loyal customer of Law’s since 2001. The catch? He travels from New South Wales, Australia to visit the store.

On this particular occasion he was picking up $7,000 in track, trains and landscapes (“The dollar is kind right now,” he said).

Young has family living in West Seattle, which helps justify the trips, and he remembers discovering the Electric Train Shop 10 years ago.

“There was a big picture of a train on the wall when I was down there on California Ave. and I thought, ‘Either some idiot has painted a train on the wall or there is a train shop here.’”

Sixty-year-old Young is another case of the “train gene,” as Law would put it, spending his working days as a real-life train conductor in Australia. He got into model trains seriously in his twenties and never looked back.

Today, Young figures he has over $20,000 invested in his model trains that run throughout his home and into the yard through holes in the wall.

He embraces the modern technology with a train that plays his favorite music as it chugs along and controls the elaborate setup with wireless controllers and his laptop. The crown jewels of his collection are three sets of gold-plated Millenium train sets.

“My wife thinks I’m crazy,” Young said.

“I spent 30 years working as a conductor on the trains in Australia and you think, ‘Well, this guy goes to work and now he comes home and plays trains?’”

“But I just like them,” he said. “It’s a passion.”

The Electric Train Shop at 625 S.W. 152nd St. is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. To check out the store's website, please click here.