The Christmas Train

Cass and Ollie hail from a long line of train enthusiasts. Besides the hundreds of dollars my dad and I flattened on the tracks in pennies when I was a kid, he also took our entire family cross-country--from Ohio to California--on an Amtrak. And back again. I blame that trip on the fact that my adult brother has a train table in his basement.

In the winter, Cass, Ollie and I spend a lot of time at the Glancy trains at the Detroit Historical Society. The Thursday before Christmas we were there for almost two hours. They didn't want to leave, transfixed. Hands and forehead pressed against the glass, watching the trains circle, levers drop, bridge lift, balloon drift, carousel spin, trolley zip. It's bizarre. In their blood, those trains.

I felt a tradition-fueled obligation to get them their own Lionel to go around the tree. They'd been obsessively admiring other people's tree-circling steam engines for weeks ("Wow, Mom--it has real smoke." "That's a Pensy tank car locomotive." "Look, it has a flat bed!"), plus I'd written them a book for Christmas about the adventures of two brothers who hop aboard a train that takes them to a magical land. We set up Penn Flyer the night before, and you could see the train stretching around the tree from the stairs. Cass shrieked when he saw it--about half way down. Like full-out, let-it-fly scream. I will never forget it.