TrainDad

Toy trains, while still very much enjoyed, are no longer enough.

The munchin must have a model rail­road. A real one, with snow (appar­ently model rail­roads with­out snow aren’t real). He’s will­ing to be very, very patient for it (“this will take us years to make”) but he’s locked on and I don’t think any­thing is going to break that lock. A few days ago he met us at break­fast with the announce­ment that he had started pray­ing that God would let him have a big HO scale Norfolk-Southern diesel engine. At least God has all the details he needs to place the order.

I remem­ber my teenage trial-entry into the world of model rail­road­ing, and I remem­ber one thing in par­tic­u­lar: pric­ing for the whole indus­try is based on the bank accounts of old retired men with large pen­sions. It’s a crazy-expensive hobby, par­tic­u­larly for a 5-year-old, and not one I really have any desire to pour money into right now.

But know­ing how per­sis­tent this kid is, I’m plot­ting strategy.

I’ve got challenges:

1. I’m broke.
2. I have no spare time.
3. Our house has no extra room.

But I’ve also got a few things on my side.

1. Munchkin is patient. Unlike most 5-year-olds. It’s okay if it takes us a year or two to get started!
2. Munchkin is eas­ily sat­is­fied. An oval on a piece of wood will do, at first, land­scap­ing not manda­tory. No brass engines required.
3. I’m pretty clever at things like this.

Since I have some time to work with, I have the lux­ury of being able to watch clear­ance sales at the dis­count web sites and local stores. And I just found this: a $15 engine!

I’ll keep you updated.

I sup­pose it’s pretty nor­mal to make a train out of card­board boxes, but this time Jonathan and I got a lit­tle bit car­ried away. We’ve been col­lect­ing big dia­per boxes for about as long as he’s been alive; they are a handy size, very sturdy, and have nice “han­dles” cut in the sides. We decided they would make a great train.

We found some pho­tos of a steam engine (the orig­i­nal Polar Express, Pere Mar­quette No. 1225) and printed them out, then adhered them to the sides of the box. At Jonathan’s request (read: demand!), we added a smoke­stack and the very impor­tant cow catcher. Just the right size hole cut in the top allows him to climb in and be the engineer.

A few more prints turned another box into a ten­der, then more for a hop­per car and a tank car, and we had a nice lit­tle freight unit going. I have to admit to a spe­cial advan­tage: the abil­ity to print onto adhesive-backed vinyl, in essence mak­ing giant stickers.

Unwrapped dia­per boxes make up the rest of the train now, along with a wire rack and a hand-held sweeper. (Any­thing makes a train, when cou­pled to some­thing else!) One morn­ing I went down­stairs to find that he had loaded each box up with stuffed ani­mal pas­sen­gers. He’s had a great time play­ing with it. Ah, these are the days!

My son, Jonathan, has adorably said this since last Sep­tem­ber when he rode “George,” a mini train near our house. When every­one is on train and ready to go, the con­duc­tor calls out “All aboard!“Jonathan has now devel­oped a new appli­ca­tion of the term. A wait­ress at a local eatery tick­led him in his high chair, and he loved it. She came back sev­eral times to tickle a bit more. As she would walk away, he started yelling “All Aboard!” as a way to tell her “tickle me more, please!” The next morn­ing, he called “All Aboard!” over and over with me at break­fast to let me know I should tickle his feet some more. He is down there now, yelling it. Bet­ter go tickle!