They weren’t resting on the track, as if on display. They were running. Every last one, and at maximum speed. Whipping past one way and the other. Steam engines and diesels and freight trains and passenger trains. A train consisting of nothing but green boxcars chugged past only a foot or so above the floor. A red and silver Santa Fe diesel flew by at chest level on another track, sped past pulling at least ten passenger cars, the interiors illuminated, little silhouettes of riders in the windows. And then, catching Harry by surprise as it came from a different direction, on a stretch of track that ran right past his left ear, a trio of Albany & Bennington diesel engines pulling a line of tanker cars that seemed to go off into infinity.

And the noise. God, the noise. It was close to deafening. An incessant din.

ChuffchuffCLICKETYCLACKclicketyCLACKwooWOOchuffCLICKETYchuffCLICKETYchuffWOOchuggachuggaclackclicketyCHUFFCHUFFclicketyCLACKwooWOOchuffCLICKETYchuffCLICKETYchuffWOOchuggachuggaclackclicketyCHUFFCHUFFclicketyCLACKwooWOOchuffCLICKETYchuffCLICKETYchuffWOOchuggachuggaclackclicketyCHUFF . . .

It felt to Harry like being inside a power plant, as if all these trains were turbines, cranking out enough electricity to light a city. Why had Nabler built such an elaborate apparatus? What on earth could be the point of all this? And why would he leave it running even when he wasn’t on the premises?

As Harry ducked and weaved his way through the tracks, he found there was even more to see. At the center of all this, and along the walls, were scale-model re-creations of towns and hills and tunnels and bridges that the trains were passing through continuously. As he got closer, he could make out the details more clearly.

At first glance, what Nabler had made looked like a typical model village. Stores and houses and trees and anything else one might expect to find on a typical American street. But Nabler had incorporated what an artist might have referred to as “found objects” into what would have otherwise been fairly realistic scenes. That chimney atop the pickle factory was clearly a lipstick tube. Those electrical wires strung from pole to pole were brown shoelaces. That manhole cover on the street was a button from a shirt. The building labeled optometrist had a real pair of reading glasses sitting atop it. The store with a locksmith sign had a set of actual car keys dangling from it.

Harry remembered that day when a woman came back into the diner looking for her lipstick.

There was a wide stretch of road about two feet long that, unlike a normal section of highway, curled up at each end. Harry reached down, ran his hand over its surface, felt the rough texture, almost like sandpaper. And it was then Harry realized this was the deck of a skateboard that had been worked into the layout.

Harry thought back to when Dylan had told him he’d lost his skateboard. One second it was there, the next it was gone.