Steam

So: once, in 1993, I found myself on a train from Bucharest to Timisoara. I believe I read a bit; I looked out the window and watched a man drive a horse-drawn cart; I chatted with a university student who knew some English. And I remember that, all the while, a looped soundtrack played over and over on the train's feeble speakers: there were, I think, a few Romanian pop songs, and then, rather ominously, there was Soul Asylum's Runaway Train. Yeah, sure, it's a fine song, and was a real hit at the time. But, really, who wants to hear about heading the "wrong way on a one way track" six times, in a two-hour train trip?

Well, that's right: a toddler might. After all, Cleo's been on her Old MacDonald jag for six months, and is still going strong: you can't ride in the car without hearing the familiar request. Put her in that Romanian train compartment, and she'd probably delight in the sheer repetitiveness of the aural atmosphere. But I think she'd also enjoy it for a second reason: the girl, frankly, is deeply into trains.

She still has trouble with the word, but she can evoke a train's sound quite convincingly: shoo-shoo-shoo, goes Cleo, when her picture books feature images of trains. So I thought I'd give her the full dose this week. After all, there aren't any American cities more closely bound to the history of the train than Baltimore, and unexpectedly balmy February skies only encouraged a trip or two on the rails.

With beautiful blue skies above us, then, we drove down to Bolton Hill yesterday, and bought a round-trip ticket on the light rail. I've taken Cleo on it a couple of times, but we'd never ridden downtown, let alone at rush hour, and it was a joy to watch her watch the city, alive, around her. Down at the harbor, we walked over to the local Barnes and Noble, which has - God knows who negotiated this contract - the standard 5-by-3 foot Thomas the Tank Engine tabletop model in a corner of their kids' section. Cleo sent locomotives hurtling down steep inclines at frightening velocities with a cool, clinical reserve, and then contemplated a tiny stoplight that was set up for imaginary car traffic. And then, temporarily sated, she fell asleep on my back on the return walk to the light rail.

But we weren't done. At home, I opened the laptop and showed her a couple of videos of classic steam engines, including this handsome entry on a recently restored Nevada locomotive. More, said Cleo. So today, figuring that a train in the hand is worth two in cyberspace, we headed down to the B&O Railroad Museum. Soon enough, we were standing before Peter Cooper's remarkable Tom Thumb. And trying out the bunks in a mid-century caboose. And tugging at the controls of a huge black freight engine, emulating the very gestures we'd seen in the video a day before.

Okay, so maybe Cleo got a wee bit scared in the lolling 25-cent toy train. And, true, there may have been a couple of minor skirmishes over laptop keys, as we tried to watch the video. All in all, though, I think you can put us both down as train fans - even if (or perhaps because) we never did hear Soul Asylum in the process.