It only stood to reason that a toy train shop proprietor would construct his own layout, display, whatever you wanted to call it. Certainly not a diorama. That suggested something small. What Edwin was building was nothing short of grand. A magnificent stage on which his trains were the players. Long stretches of track. Graceful curves. Mountains and valleys and rivers and lakes. Small towns with a post office and a gas station and maybe even a diner just like the one across the street. (Lots of opportunities for whimsy here. For example, Edwin’s eatery was not named after the town, but featured a sign that read sam ’n’ ella’s eats.)

Edwin loved to incorporate everyday items into his display, so-called “found objects.” The arms from a pair of sunglasses could be fashioned into a railing, an antenna, or a streetlamp. A lipstick tube made a perfect culvert or exhaust chimney atop a factory. A Palm Pilot could be turned on its side and made to look like the screen at a drive-in movie theater.

Edwin realized he had been whistling a tune, the words to which would have been familiar to many:

“I’ve been workin’ on the railroad, all the livelong day.”

While enough track had been laid down to allow Edwin to run a train continuously while he puttered about—the constant chuffchuffchuffchuffchuff was a soothing background noise, a Zen-like mantra—only about half of the layout was decorated with scenery. The tracks were affixed with short screws to narrow strips of plywood that ran across an open-grid network. Soon the spaces between these strips would be filled with hills and valleys and streets where the various buildings would be placed.

Edwin was about to configure some supports for a new mountain when he heard the bell above the door in the front part of the shop.

A customer.

Edwin set down his tools, slipped on his vest, and donned his engineer’s cap. He slid open the door that separated the back room from the main shop, entered, and closed the door behind him.

“Hello!” he said cheerily to the woman who had just arrived. “And how are you this lovely day?”

“Oh, just great,” she said, flashing a smile.

Edwin put her age at late thirties. Brown hair, plumpish, glasses.

“You’re new, aren’t you?” she asked. “The store, I mean?”

“Been here awhile,” Edwin said.

“I saw the trains running in the window and couldn’t resist.” She cast her gaze wide, taking in the various items, then zeroed in on some steam engines in a glass case by the cash register. “These are just so cute,” she said.

Ah, cute, Edwin thought. Women always thought the hobby was cute. Like these fine pieces of miniature machinery were Cabbage Patch Dolls or Beanie Babies. If she reached into her purse and brought out her wallet before departing, she could think these trains were the cutest goddamn things she’d ever seen.