TrainDad

We’ve had a dras­tic and sud­den change in plans. Yes, the cou­plers really are com­ing, but the details will be com­ing after our Really Big Camp­ing Trip.

Yep, you read it right. We are tak­ing a 3-year-old camp­ing. That might be stu-u-upid enough by itself, but wait! There’s more.

It’s Novem­ber: very, very cold.

And on a beach: 3-yr-old wan­der­ing around dan­ger­ous surf.

At a camp­ground that brags about the rat­tlesnakes and coral snakes. Oh yeah, and the hun­dreds of alli­ga­tors.

With no plan­ning, because we decided to go… today.

And — worst of all — no trains.

I am, offi­cially, an idiot.

Oh, did I men­tion that he still sleeps in a crib at home, and I’m pre­tend­ing he’ll take to a sleep­ing bag like magic?

And I don’t even have an excuse. I actu­ally did this same thing last year, and it was a hor­ren­dous deba­cle. And I do mean deba­cle — ice, rain, hurricane-force winds, freez­ing tem­per­a­tures, and no prepa­ra­tion on my part for any of those conditions.

I remem­ber the park ranger, yelling over the storm:

“So, you think you’re gonna keep a 2-year-old chitlin alive in this madness?”

(Me, with utter con­fi­dence in my mas­culin­ity): “Oh yeah. No prob­lem. We’re ready. And I brought a month’s sup­ply of firewood.”

(Me, 24 min­utes later): “Do you know where the near­est hotel is?”

“Yup, I fig­gered you’d be back, so I called to set y’all up in a room.”

(mas­sive relief): “Oh, thank you, kind sir!“

“But they ain’t got no rooms left. No sir. Said the near­est vacancy was in Dubuque. 1,158 miles north­west. Just turn left at the sign that says ‘thanks for com­ing (idiot).’ ”

I’ve pretty much erased from my mind just how bad that was. It took a year, but now I’ve started hav­ing these sweet dreams of how nice it will be to prance in the woods with my sweet lit­tle guy, search­ing for bugs and snakes, gig­gling in the warm sunshine.

Or in the ice storm, while being chased by alligators.

“Yup, near­est avail­able room is Albu­querque, 2,414 miles due west. [Under his breath…] Idiot.”

I’m sorry I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been locked deep in the Top Secret Under­ground Lab­o­ra­tory, wear­ing my big gog­gles while stir­ring large vats of bub­bling green goo. I’ve finally emerged, and beyond the crazed look in my eyes you might notice a bit of a sparkle, because I’ve got some­thing good for you Geo­t­rax fans.

Yup, easy add-on cou­plers. Has any­one else noticed that fewer and fewer Geo­t­rax vehi­cles can be hooked together? What really got me going was the Friend­liest Team–twin trol­leys, Chatty and Chirpy, that are so friendly they can’t cou­ple to each other or any­one else. No hooks, no loops, noth­ing. What does that mean to my 3-year-old? The trol­leys sit off to the side, because play­ing with them means it’s hard to play with any­thing else. No trains, no long lines of every-car-we-own con­sists. For a kid who loves trains, that’s what it’s all about. So I decided to do some­thing about it.

What I’ve ended up with are molded plas­tic cou­plers that can be attached to any Geo­t­rax vehi­cle. (Or any­thing else in the world, for that mat­ter, though I’m not sure why you would, but hey–you buy, I’ll sell, whether you stick them on your Geo­t­rax or on your pink plas­tic flamingo. No dif­fer­ence to me.) Since the Geo­t­rax line has a wide vari­ety of “bumpers” where there should be cou­plers, I’ve made them with a mount­ing sur­face that fits as many as pos­si­ble. Over time, I might make a few dif­fer­ent vari­eties to fit a few spe­cific vehi­cles that are prob­lem­atic, but don’t hold your breath… this generic ver­sion fits almost everything.

I should have pic­tures and more detailed infor­ma­tion up by tomor­row, along with pric­ing and order­ing info. My goal is not to get rich off of these; they won’t be out­ra­geous. Stay tuned!

Today our lit­tle guy, Jonathan, turned three years old. The biggest adven­ture cen­tered around “Day Out With Thomas” at the North Car­olina Trans­porta­tion Museum. This event hosted the “real” Thomas — the live steam Porter-conversion brought in from the Strass­burg (In case you don’t know, the major­ity of these events use non-powered ver­sions that rely on local power). I’ve not planned on par­tic­i­pat­ing in one of these events, because the price is crazy for some­thing that you don’t even really get to expe­ri­ence. I mean, if you could actu­ally ride on Thomas him­self, that would be some­thing spe­cial; but rid­ing in a pas­sen­ger car behind Thomas is no dif­fer­ent than rid­ing in the same car behind any other loco­mo­tive. And doing it with 400 other scream­ing tod­dlers isn’t exactly my idea of a “day out” — a day out of my mind, more like it. In any case, a lov­ing uncle bought tick­ets, so there we were.

The ride was about what I expected; Jonathan enjoyed it, though, and I’m glad we had the oppor­tu­nity. We got much more excite­ment out of watch­ing Thomas drive. If you go to one of these events, I rec­om­mend ask­ing right up front where the best view­ing loca­tion is to see Thomas start up. That’s the excit­ing moment, as he belches smoke and steam and the dri­ving wheels slip. We also watched him from above, stand­ing on a bridge. He tooted his tinny Eng­lish whis­tle once as he went under, his engi­neer lean­ing out the win­dow and waving.

One of the things Jonathan enjoyed most was the Norfolk-Southern engine on a side track. They allowed vis­i­tors into the cab, let them sit in the driver’s seat and han­dle the con­trols. With the engine run­ning, it was a great expe­ri­ence to push the throt­tle and hear the diesel roar. And it’s always a delight to blow the horn!

Other high­lights included rides on a “caboose train” and a large HO-scale model rail­road set up by a local club.

Finally, Jonathan received a Geo­T­rax Grand Cen­tral Sta­tion set as a birth­day gift. This is the “expanded set” with extra cars and a DVD. JB was so excited he just didn’t know how to express it. Aero is his new favorite — he asked if he could sleep with Aero tonight.

Lots to talk about over the next few days… notes on Thomas and Geo­t­rax and Track­Mas­ter and more. Stay tuned!

I’m get­ting a lot of inter­est in get­ting Track­mas­ter and Geo­t­rax trains and track to work together. With­out any mod­i­fi­ca­tions, here’s how they work:

• Geo­t­rax trains run eas­ily on both the old blue track and the new brown. They don’t have a trac­tion sur­face (track top), how­ever, so they can’t pull much.
• The wheels on Track­mas­ter cars will fit between the rails on Geo­t­rax track, although they have a very bumpy ride.
• Unfor­tu­nately, the drive wheels on Track­mas­ter engines are a tiny bit too wide to fit between Geo­t­rax rails. That means you can’t run Track­mas­ter engines on Geotrax.

I assume that’s the sticky wicket; I think peo­ple are want­ing to run Thomas on Geo­t­rax, not the other way around.

I’ve been pon­der­ing this for a while, and I don’t have a good solu­tion. There is a cheap Thomas (the $6 Pull-Back) that is approx­i­mately the same size and pro­por­tions as Geo­t­rax trains, but it’s not a sim­ple con­ver­sion to mount the shell on a Geo engine. As Geo­t­rax trains get big­ger, due to adding the gear com­plex­i­ties of reverse and the abil­ity to fit lit­tle peo­ple inside, those pull-back shells seem smaller each day. The trains in the Mail Deliv­ery set have similarly-sized shells: just a bit too small to make an easy con­ver­sion. Does any­one know of a Thomas toy that is a lit­tle big­ger than the pull-backs? For exam­ple, how large is the whistle-and-go Thomas?

You can always put a Track­mas­ter Thomas on the back of a Geo­t­rax gon­dola, then tell the kids that Thomas broke down and Geo has to save him!

Any thoughts? I’d love to develop a sim­ple and inex­pen­sive con­ver­sion that peo­ple could eas­ily do themselves.

My son saw a photo of the Rope ‘N Ride Ranch and imme­di­ately said, “where’s the smokestack?”

Quick to be help­ful, I answered, “It’s right over h… uh… where’s the smokestack?”

That’s right. Geo­t­rax, well known for their great detail (check out the horse­shoe prints on the hill), for­got to put a smoke­stack on this steamer.

This is an engine rem­i­nis­cent of the clas­sic 4–4-0 Amer­i­can. But it doesn’t have a ten­der, either; that only leaves three options.

1. Maybe it’s a sad­dle tanker (just being obvi­ous here, since it has sad­dle tanks on the sides). But a sad­dle tanker needs a smoke­stack, so this really isn’t an option after all.
2. Maybe it’s a “fire­less.” That’s the only kind of steam engine with­out a smoke­stack; it’s just a big tank that would be charged with steam. But then it doesn’t need the sad­dle tanks, so what’s up?
3. Maybe it’s a fake — a gas or diesel or elec­tric engine that just has a steam-like facade built around it. We fre­quently take rides on a sim­i­lar “steam engine” locally. Unlikely, though, since they are plac­ing this in the era of the Old West. The great irony of this pos­si­bil­ity, of course, is that it really is an elec­tric engine made to look like a steam engine.

While I’m whin­ing about picky lit­tle things, I might as well give you one more: the Ama­zon page linked above lists the engine’s name as “Rusty the Steam Engine.” Not quite right: Fisher-Price named it “Old Rust” and even trade­marked the name.

The Nor­folk South­ern Cor­po­ra­tion is offer­ing a free col­or­ing book to any­one who asks. All you have to do is send an e-mail request­ing one to contactus@nscorp.com. You can see the offer on their web page.

Toby the Train talks about trains and tracks arrives in an official-looking manila enve­lope with the NS logo. That’s a pretty excit­ing thing in itself! Toby the train takes you through pretty stan­dard rail­road PR:

• We do very impor­tant work
• Our work­ers are the best
• Stay safe around trains and tracks
• Don’t play on tracks
• Stop at crossings
• We’re a green company

But our three-year-old is obliv­i­ous to all that — he just knows it has pic­tures of trains, and cross­ing gates… excite­ment on every page!

While you are the Nor­folk South­ern site, it might be worth check­ing their com­pany store. They have a good bit of NS-branded mer­chan­dise at very rea­son­able prices, such as a child’s engi­neer hat for $4.75.