Once the track sections had been made into a continuous loop, Jeremy pulled out more items from the Tide box and started to carefully place them onto the track, making sure the wheels’ flanges were set within the rail edges. All that remained to make the train operational was the engine.

Jeremy picked up the weighty locomotive and the attached tender with pennsylvania emblazoned on the side.

“The tender’s where they kept all the coal that they had to keep feeding into the engine to keep it going,” his father said. “You don’t see anything like that these days.”

Inside the locomotive cab, sitting at the controls, was a tiny engineer, dressed in overalls and a striped cap, his head no larger than a pea. Jeremy leaned in for a closer look.

“Pretty realistic, huh?” his father said.

“He winked at me,” Jeremy said, and his father laughed. He turned the engine around, grasping it with both hands, and looked straight into the headlight mounted on the front.

“The light’ll come on when we get it on the track and turn the throttle,” his father said, which struck Jeremy as an odd thing to say, given that he could already see a faint glimmer in the bulb.

Glynis, stroking the hair on her Bratz doll, bored and annoyed that this dumbass train set was getting so much attention, asked, “Are we gonna have breakfast or what?”

As Jeremy set the locomotive onto the track, there was that tingle again. It was hard to describe, but it felt a little like that old gag gift his friend Ricky had tried on him. A joy buzzer he’d found in his own father’s box of mementos. You slipped it into your palm and when you shook hands with someone they got a zap. But this was like a tenth of that. Subtle, pleasing almost.

Jeremy’s father ran two wires from the underside of the track to the two terminals on the transformer, screwed down the threaded connectors to ensure good electrical conduction, then plugged it into the wall. There was a handle on the top of it, which he explained was the throttle.

“Crank ’er up!”

Jeremy turned the throttle, and as if by magic the locomotive made an electrical humming sound, the headlight illuminated, and as he moved the handle farther to the right, the wheels began to turn. Feathery wisps of smoke puffed out of the steam engine’s smokestack. And what a glorious sound it made.

Chuff. Chuff. Chuff.

Jeremy gave the throttle another turn. The wheels spun more furiously.

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuffchuff

Jeremy’s father pressed a red button on the transformer to activate a whistle on the engine. “There’s so much more stuff you can get. Buildings and trees and little people. One boxcar has a trapdoor on the top and a giraffe sticks its head out and then drops it back just in time, and . . .”

Jeremy wasn’t listening.