Dental Depot Explains: What’s With All The Trains?

If you’ve ever been in or driven by a Dental Depot office, you can’t help but notice all the trains. But where do they all come from?  

About 20 years ago, an Oklahoma dentist, Dr. Glenn Ashmore, and his wife were on vacation in NYC. They have a passion for antiquing; but a train overhead at FAO Schwarz stopped them in their tracks…. literally… and gave birth to an idea to set his practice apart.  

Dr. Ashmore now owns dozens of Dental Depots.  

“This is the shop where we build the actual locomotives that go outside for the decoration out there,” said John Argo who works for the dental company in their dental warehouse.  

All the trains inside and out at every Dental Depot around the country are created and maintained right here in Oklahoma City.  

“We’ve got sixty of these running in Oklahoma City, and we’ve got one guy that has to keep them running,” said Argo.  

The operation is full of all types of trains. The small ones that run inside and the large trains that you see outside.  

“This one has a rear entrance, and it will have a couple of little seats in there and a couple of little valves to play with and you can ring the bell and stuff like that,” said Argo  

The small crew is pretty creative when it comes to putting these together  

“We use a propane tank that’s refurbished we put this on the front and then we have these on the bottom, I don’t know if you can see these are oil field pump jack wheels, they weigh about two hundred and fifty pounds each,” said Argo.  

Also taking an old cart and refurbishing it into a railroad luggage cart  

“We’ll take all the wood wherever it is, we’ll get rid of the wood and just do all metal,” said Argo.  

And while there is a lot of work going on in the warehouse, the memorabilia is mind blowing. There are railroad hats are from the early 1900’s.  

“These are different ones like from like the ticker collector, and you’ve got the conductor, and this one is the sleeping car conductor,” said Argo.  

Original railroad stock certificates, one dating back to 1887.  

This is all stored in a vault. With copies made to display at different dental locations.  

“This is a 1929 railroad map of the state of Oklahoma,” said Argo.  

The map displays all the Oklahoma train routs from 1929.  

The priceless memorabilia and kept safe in a vault.