Growing up in Naperville, near Chicago, we often "toured" all those stores such as Carson, Pirie Scott....Marshall Fields....perhaps also The Museum of Science & Industry...all being big layouts. Naperville then was so small, the Sears was just a TINY Catalog storefront, the rest was the delivered goods section.
We had an ACE (Soukups Hardware) that had, IIRC an Lionel "stepped" display. Didnt have any trains running, but it was eye candy for sure!