Next time you throw a train...

January 30th, 2008

During the summer of 1970, a series of music festivals took place across Canada. Following the first concert in Toronto, the musicians and their assorted friends and roadies (or was it railies?) traveled by private train to the remaining festivals in Winnipeg and Calgary. They played, partied and boozed it up every mile of the way and, at the end of the line, headliner Janis Joplin and festival organizer Ken Walker exchanged a case of tequila and a quart of Southern Comfort, prompting Janis to exclaim: “Next time you throw a train, invite me, man.”

While certainly not to that bold or bleary-eyed extent, that is how I felt recently when I had the good fortune to join three siblings in a living room as they unearthed their old model train set. I don’t know very much about model trains, only that this one was a Williams relic, and had more metal parts in it than the car in my driveway.

The fun began innocently enough, just as it did so many years ago, with one engine turning a simple oval. That just wouldn’t do, just as it didn’t years ago, and it wasn’t until we raised the corners that the engine hit its top speed. Before long, the train was smashing into a Matchbox tanker truck filled with toxic chemicals, knocking over a plastic grizzly that was clearly rabid and enraged, and toppling a line of toy superheroes stacked up like dominoes. There was even a rock slide of genuine pieces of the Berlin Wall, brought home from a recent tour of Europe. It was obvious the engineer was asleep, drunk, or both, and would soon be looking for another line of work.

In order to properly elevate the corner under the coffee table, and the newly-christened Dead Man’s Curve after the straightaway, a number of old VHS tapes stepped in as building blocks. The faces of the stars on the boxes were like giant billboards for the disaster area in the middle of the track that was once a quiet little railroad town. The action escalated quickly, until it reached a point where the engine began pouring plumes of white smoke thick enough to set off the smoke detector. When the power supply gave up, the train stayed on schedule with a motorcycle battery hauled in from the garage, a few feet of heavy wire, and a light touch on the controls. The boost in power really got things moving.

Someone came up with the idea to add a jump in the tracks, a rare feat for any train, and soon the engine was sailing through the air like Sandra and Keanu and the bus from Speed. For the grand finale, our brave conductor fashioned a flaming hoop out of toilet paper and a coat hanger, and ploughed his locomotive through a deadly ring of fire. Not even the resident hobo and his toy farm animals remained on board for this ultimate spectacle of daring. None of us could remember the smoke detector sounding off so much when we were kids, probably because we didn’t have one, or more likely because Mom would have stepped in well before that point with a wooden spoon and a smack behind the ear, and opened a window or two.

In the end, it was a night of smiles and memories. I just hope the next time they throw a train, they invite me, man.