The pitch
What walked into the Den
Jason and Bill Thornhill pitched Aspen Railway Crossing in season 7, episode 3, a train-themed tourist stop out on the prairie near Mossleigh, Alberta.
Their proposal put $450,000 on the table in exchange for 20 percent of the company. Run the arithmetic and the founders were valuing the whole venture at about $2.25 million.
After the show
What happened next
Whether a Dragon actually invested is not something we can point to in any public record. CBC broadcast the pitch, not the boardroom result, and we would rather say that plainly than guess.
The business itself is very much alive. When we looked in July 2026 the operation, now branded Aspen Crossing, was booking train excursions, campground stays and dining experiences through its own site.
Our read
The Hub verdict
The tell on this one is the valuation the founders were comfortable naming. Asking $450,000 for a fifth of the business puts the whole prairie railway at $2.25 million, which is a real operating number, not a napkin sketch, and it reads like a business that already had traffic through the gate.
What we cannot do is tell you how the Dragons reacted, because the segment never showed it. That is the honest gap. The reassuring part is that the attraction is still running under the Aspen Crossing name, booking excursions and campground stays, so the story here is continuity rather than collapse.
A living attraction with a clear ask and an outcome the broadcast simply never revealed.
Worth knowing: We can vouch that the attraction is trading today, but not for any deal number, because the outcome was never disclosed.
