It was just standing there on a siding, which Kate now knew was a piece of track where you stored trains that nobody was using. Nobody had used this steam train for a long time.

Its paint was gone, and rust had turned the train completely brick red. In places it had eaten right through the metal, and you could see into the darkness of the big boiler, where the steam used to be. All the glass in the windows was gone. Grass and weeds had grown up through the spokes of the rusty wheels, which would never turn again.

Once it must have been as fast and proud and powerful as the Silver Arrow. It had thundered down tracks snorting steam and hauling long strings of cars. But those days were gone. You could never fix this train, it was way past that.

But you could still make out its name in very, very faint faded paint:

THE TWILIGHT STAR

Kate reached out and touched the brittle, flaking metal.

“I’m sorry, Twilight Star,” she said. “I bet you were a great train.”

This was it, this was what Uncle Herbert had asked them to look out for. Well, she’d found it. It wasn’t a real star, it was a train. She wondered who’d left it there. Did they know it was forever when they left? Did they tell it they’d come back but then never did? A robin flitted out through the train’s window and off into the brightening air. It must have a nest in there, Kate thought. So at least it had the birds to keep it company.

Kate walked back to the Silver Arrow with her head full of thoughts.

“I found something,” Kate said. “An old train called the Twilight Star.”

OH

“Have you heard of it?”

THAT WAS THE NAME OF THE TRAIN BEFORE ME

THE ONE THAT DIDN’T COME BACK

So that’s what had happened to it.

“This must have been as far as it got.”

IT MUST HAVE BROKEN DOWN HERE

AND ITS CONDUCTORS MUST HAVE GIVEN UP AND GONE HOME

“Oh. But then what would’ve happened to them?”

NOTHING

THAT WAS THE END OF THEIR ADVENTURE

“What about the animals?”

I GUESS THEY HAD TO FEND FOR THEMSELVES

IT WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN EASY. BUT THEY’RE USED TO IT

Kate didn’t say anything more for a while. She sat and looked around at the Silver Arrow’s cab, which had seemed so weird when she’d first seen it and which now felt so much like home. She imagined it old and rusty and ruined like the Twilight Star. Sitting all by itself in the wind and rain and snow, alone and abandoned.

“I would never leave you here,” she said quietly. But the Silver Arrow didn’t answer. Maybe it didn’t believe her. Maybe it was right.