In the meantime they had their next train lesson. The Silver Arrow talked Kate and Tom through the process of getting the engine going from a standing start. The train was right about one thing: It was a good teacher. It taught them how to read the steam pressure gauge and the little glass tube that showed the water level in the boiler. They went over the brakes and the throttle again, and it introduced them to a mysterious but important device called a reversing lever, which controlled how much steam power went to the pistons.

Or something like that.

“I thought that’s what the throttle did,” Kate said.

IT’S—WELL—THINK OF IT LIKE THE GEARBOX ON A CAR

“I don’t know how that works either.”

OKAY, THE GEARS ON A BICYCLE—WAIT

HMMM

“Hmmm?” Tom said. “What’s ‘hmmm’?”

THERE’S A STATION COMING UP

“Okay…”

BUT IT’S NOT ON THE SCHEDULE

“Can I actually see the schedule?” Kate said.

NO

“Well, what should we do?”

DON’T ASK ME. YOU’RE THE CONDUCTOR

Kate thought of saying, Well, you’re the train! or How am I supposed to know? or maybe But Tom’s a conductor, too! But she didn’t. She couldn’t, really. She hadn’t asked to be the conductor of a magic steam train, or not exactly, but deep down she knew she kind of had. She’d wanted something real, something that wasn’t kid stuff. Something that mattered. And looky here, this was it.

And Uncle Herbert had told her to get off the train, right at the start, and she hadn’t. If she wasn’t sure what to do, she would just have to guess based on what she did know and live with the consequences.

Probably that was an important life lesson she was supposed to be learning from this whole experience. Which was fine, she guessed, though she hoped there weren’t too many more of them.

“Okay, let’s stop,” she said. “Let’s find out what’s going on.”

12

Kate Finds Out What’s Going On

SO THEY THROTTLED THE SILVER ARROW DOWN, AND fiddled with the reversing lever, and applied the brakes, and Kate took her ticket-puncher and straightened her conductor’s hat and went back to the passenger cars.

They were chugging through a pine forest now, and the air smelled pleasantly like their garage had after the time Kate spilled turpentine there. They pulled up at a plain cement platform, and Kate threw the big brass lever that opened the doors.

Something was different. Usually there was a sign on the platform saying where they were, but this time Kate couldn’t see one anywhere.