When I picture a Christmas tree with toys underneath it, I always see a doll, a teddy bear, a ball, and a toy train. Sometimes the train is wooden, hand carved, painted with primary colors. Sometimes it’s a little electric one going around on a track that encircles the base of the tree. Can you see it? It’s traditional, classic… yet that universal scene has never happened for me, because we have cats.
They are, the three of them, wonderful all year round, but their naturally curious nature and endless experimentation regarding the nature of gravity does not allow us the holiday tropes of toy trains, dangling ornaments, fringe on highly reflective clothing, or fancy glasses placed anywhere near the edges of tables. However, this year I am braving it for just one day, setting up track in my daughter’s room, and watching the train go around in a little circle while I make “whoo whoooo” whistle noises for a half hour or so, even if the cats do stalk it like fuzzy Godzillas.
My grandfather had a model train setup in the basement. I was the oldest grandchild and we lived right down the street, so I got a lot of alone time with it. I was not allowed to run it by myself because it was electric, and to my grandmother electricity was still “on notice”… she’d seen it around, but that didn’t necessarily mean she could trust it.
The model train was a Lionel, with what I think must have been a bakelite body: it generated puffs of smoke via mysterious pellets that Grandpa only used on Christmas. It had a headlight as well. It ran on a little green table that had the beginnings of a tableau; there was a station, and a little white gate that went up and down, and I think a farmhouse or barn of some kind, and of course a tunnel. That was my favorite part, watching the light on the train as it lit up the interior of the tunnel then suddenly rocketed out.
I don’t have the train. It belonged to my uncle, of course, and then he gave it to his son, who sold it a long time ago. I also have never lived anywhere large enough to use table space in such a gratuitous fashion… our only flat surface near that size is the bed.
Trains are magical. The choo-chooing and the chugga-chugging and the clackety-clack of the tracks. Magical.
I have been thinking about this for a long time, this trains thing: I even put a bid in on a Lionel engine like my grandpa’s over on eBay a few days ago. I wondered why the train was such a standard Christmas toy, particularly since model trains have long since been replaced by video game consoles on kids’ Christmas lists.
Besides loads of illustrations in vintage advertising, I found out that after World War II, toy trains beneath the Christmas tree became a national symbol of traveling, simpler times, and a smaller world. For a while in the 1950’s, the Lionel company was the largest and most profitable toy company on the planet. Families would invest in a basic set one year, then purchase stations and tunnels and more lengths of track for years after. The sound of toy trains harmonized with the crackling of fireplaces on Christmas Day, all across the country.
Magical.
Which brings me to right now. I’m still at work three and a half hours after the entire building has emptied because Jay St. Metrotech has a power problem that caused both of the trains I take home every night to be suspended, entirely. My only way home is to take a train 20 minutes in the opposite direction, then double back on another train that stops 14 blocks past where I live. Oh, and it’s raining, buckets. So there’s that.
I fell asleep on a train once, heading from Kansas City to San Francisco. I don’t remember why I took the train and not a plane, but it was an overnight trip: when I woke up train car was entirely empty. Like Twilight Zone empty. Since this was before cellphones, I had no idea where I was, and I remember trying to read signs as they zoomed past.
It ended up that I was somewhere in Arizona. I was afraid to walk to the restroom; I had no idea what the protocol was on a ghost train – should I seek out the spectral conductor up at the front? Then a voice over the loudspeaker announced the next stop - a 30 minute one so we could get something to eat. I felt better (since I knew that ghosts did not need meal breaks, it must have been a human voice).
The train slowed, the airbrakes chuffed, and lots of people started getting off of the train from the car in front of mine and the car behind. Had there been a gas leak in my car?? Why hadn’t they woken me up?
Then I stepped off the train and all the other passengers laughed. Not behind the hand snickers, but good full on point and guffaw kind of laughs.
Apparently, I had fallen asleep in a less than optimal position and began snoring, softly at first, then LOUD ENOUGH to CLEAR the ENTIRE TRAIN CAR. While the giant train was MOVING… clickety clackety SCHNOZZZZZZ.
I asked a train attendant why they hadn’t just woken me up.
“Oh, we tried that,” he said, barely holding in his glee, “but it was easier just to move everybody to other cars.”
It was 5 more hours journey to Los Angeles.
I sat quietly.
Toy trains are magical. Their little wheels turning and headlights beaming nearly universally inspire tiny instances of joy.
Train trains, like subways, are industrial, in the oldest school way - necessary and kind of cocky about it, like
“What are you gonna do? Walk to Brooklyn in the rain? Really? Go ahead…try that…see where it gets you. Yeah, that’s what I thought…now just stand in here with the other 1400 people 3 inches away from your face and wait your turn to shuffle out the door in tiny steps to avoid trampling one another.”
All this to say that the representation of a thing by another thing does not mean we feel the same about one as the other. A toy bear isn’t an actual bear, in any sense. And while I love trains, and I do hope that I win that eBay one, this long day’s journey even further into night forces me to admit that, at least for me, the train part is not the magical part.
It is the TOY part that’s magical. I believe that our cats will agree.
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