All aboard

This past Saturday was the day of our local Train Day (technically the 19th Annual Manassas Heritage Railway Festival, but always Train Day to us) and this year the whole five man band that is my family trekked on down to Old Town to check it out. My wife strapped the baby to her chest and I took charge of showing the little guy and little girl around, but since the little girl basically insisted on being carried all day, that meant doing the best I could to kind of verbally herd my son through the crowds. Honestly, he did pretty well at that. And we luckily bumped into some of our neighbors, who have a son around the little guy’s age, and somehow we co-opted the additional set of parents into helping us wrangle our little trio in addition to their only child.

Even with some neighborly assistance, I wouldn’t call it easy bringing the whole brood out for an event, but I do feel like we’re finally learning a thing or two. We slathered the kids in SPF 75 Million before we left the house, and despite the blazing sun none of them got burned. We got there right when things started so that we could see everything before we’d need to leave to get the little ones home for lunch and naps. We completely avoided the vendors section of the festival, to circumvent any potential buy-me-that meltdowns. We got sno-cones, but not until close to the end, so that we could kind of keep using the promise of them as a motivator for as long as possible. So that all worked out all right, and the main objective was accomplished: the kids sure did get to see a lot of trains.

You may not be aware of it, but Lego has made some serious inroads into the train enthusiasts’ realm of late. The centerpiece attractions of Train Day are classic model train sets, with separate tables displaying the works of various model railroad clubs (I was going to make a joke about “and support groups” but I do live in a very geeky glass house of my own) but there is an official Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area Lego Train Club and a couple of amateur Lego train modelers who display as well. And of course the Lego tables are a bit more interesting to small children, with the bright-colored blocks and people and whatnot. For what it’s worth, they’re more amusing to me as well; I can appreciate the amount of work that goes into carving a flocking foamcore so that it looks just like a real miniature hillside or layering blue-tinted polyurethane so that it resembles an actual lake, but it does get to the point where if you’ve seen one O-scale countryside you’ve seen them all.

Honestly, one of these years I should bring a notebook to Train Day and make some kind of tally of how many of the model train display tables are fully (boringly) dedicated to pastoral realism and how many throw some fantastical Easter-egg type elements in. I know there was at least one table this year that had a Godzilla action figure stomping through a downtown diorama, and another had the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile waiting at a crossing gate. But what I took for a surprising number just had tracks running over grass.

The WamaLTC table had different sections along each side, with a business district full of Lego skyscrapers, a downtown full of Lego shops and restaurants, a fairground full of Lego carnival rides and a waterfront with Lego boats and bridges. The fairground had a moving ferris wheel with different pairs of Lego people riding in each car including, as my wife pointed out, “a gorilla and a centurion … for some reason”. (I also overheard another dad pointing out to his son, while looking at the downtown scene, “Look, a zombie! No … wait … I think that’s a mime.” Which was good for a hearty internal chuckle from me.) The table had a fair amount of random wackiness, but overall I guess it was what you might call Lego-realistic.

As opposed to one of the Lego tables not in the main pavillion, which was a patchwork of pop culture properties: one corner with city buildings swarming with superhero Lego characters, another corner with Star Wars, another with Lord of the Rings, and yet another with Harry Potter Lego castles and, of course, the Lego Hogwarts Express. Oh, and Disney characters, including the Lego versions of various Toy Story characters. And since Toy Story continues to be the little guy’s obsession of the moment, that uber-whimsical table was not only the first table we stopped at, it was the last one as well, as the little guy insisted we check it out again before we left.

I tend to think of Train Day as an indulgence on the little guy’s behalf, but I was surprised by how taken with it the little girl was, too. She ate it right the heck up and could not get enough of the model trains, giving me a constant refrain of “more choo-choo?” all morning. Even the sets I considered visually dull were fascinating to her. I suppose it’s got a lot to do with the magic of objects which move under their own power, even if all they do is go around and around in a circle (and sometimes into and out of tunnels). Still, it’s good to know that the train table I cobbled together for the little guy should continue to get a fair amount of use for years to come.