Having spent 25 years running a quarter-scale steam engine, I’m only a tiny bit shocked to find myself sitting in one, steam rising from the hot boiler, my hand on the brake, ready to release it.

I try to piece together why I’m here, hard due to my failing memory—part of the natural progression they say, which is no comfort, believe me. The black, belching and drifting coal smoke, choking to most, is more nostalgic to me than disturbing.

This is not the first time I’ve forgotten where I am and why. I used to panic, running aimlessly, calling for help. But I’ve now come to treat it, after a moment’s fear, like a chronic sleepwalker must feel upon waking. All the other times, however, I was somewhere on the nursing home grounds, often looking for my wife, Janet, who nurses remind me has passed away.

The miniature train I’m sitting in is just like the one I operated at our city’s now-defunct amusement park—a true, working steam locomotive, modeled after the real ones my great-great grandfather worked on right after the Civil War. I come from a long line of train people, so it’s no surprise I’ve found my way onto one, but I surely needed help. I don’t think the nurses, or the old security guard, could have let me get this far, however far I am.

My grandson, I now realize, a bit of memory light seeming to peek through darkness, has surely taken me out for another Papa Session, as he calls them. A few months back, he took me to a model railroading display at our city’s old train depot. I remember that trip somewhat well, especially when he signed me out. The nurses went on and on about how wonderful it was to see a college-aged grandson do such a thing.

But I’ve gotten worse since that day. It’s unsettling that I can vividly recall scenes from fifty years ago, but not what I just ate. It’s like memories are recorded on vinyl records in my brain, but the stylus that carves the tracks has worn out. I’ve overheard talk of putting me in The Pen—a fenced-in building where you can’t wander off. Since I’m not yet in The Pen, it’s possible my grandson is not involved, that I’m a drift-away—or runaway.

My grandson loves trains, too, carrying on the family railroad legacy his great-great-great grandfather started right after Appomattox. He was a soldier, if little is known about his Civil War days. What is known is that the war’s abrupt end left soldiers on both sides with no way to get home and no money. My great-great grandpa did what throngs of fellow soldiers did—he hopped a train. Such soldiers would be discovered, of course, conductors asking what they thought they were doing. The soldiers would say they were homeward bound. They’d still be in uniform, so conductors would look the other way. That made even more soldiers hop trains, homeward bound. Conductors soon added to the American vernacular by shortening homeward bound to hobo.

Recalling that makes me think I might be a new sort of hobo, one that not only hops a train but runs it. That would explain why the train is otherwise empty. No passengers sit in any of the quarter-scale, open-topped passenger cars, each with barely room for four.

The engine is hissing, steam rising, dark smoke making little clouds, the train ready to go, meaning I must have fired it up myself.

Yes, that must be it. If my grandson brought me here, I’ve clearly wandered off—unless. Unless perhaps the train was not operating this day and my grandson is off begging them to run it. He should have considered that, left alone, I might fire up the boiler, check the pressure, check the brake, and get ready to roll.

The deep-down rumble of stream escaping brings the urge to let the brake off, to pull the trigger and let the red lever rising from the soot-stained floor come forward, allowing the miniature iron horse trot and maybe gallop. It’s far fancier than a real iron horse, featuring a long, polished, green-painted boiler encircled by four wholly ornamental brass hoops. The headlight housing and the whistle housing are painted red and gold—and polished.

I know I shouldn’t let the brake off, but I do. After all, I’m not responsible for my own behavior anymore. They can’t do more than put me in The Pen.

The first burst of steam from the pistons starts the train moving smoothly, no jerks. The chug-push-whoosh of the pistons begins in earnest and the train rounds a little bend. It runs toward a full-scale station replica, deserted—although music suddenly plays. It’s “The Wabash Cannonball,” a song my dad loved to sing while playing his guitar. I suspect I’ve gone over a switch that triggers the music as it approaches the station.

Approaching the station at low speed, I now hear a commotion—people yelling in the distance. They must have seen the train’s smoke or heard the chugs. I resist the urge to pull the rope that blasts the whistle.

Upon reaching the station, “The Wreck of the Old 97” begins playing, another one my dad loved to pick and sing, often using a harmonica holder around his neck to make train sounds. I can almost see him sitting in a rocking chair, playing the guitar and harmonica as I pass the station, the engine picking up steam, the chug-chug-chug faster. I soon approach a quarter-scale train yard, first passing a sidetrack where a jigger sits—a two-man, muscle-operated “pumper” car, used back before gas motors to inspect the track.

The yelling now gets louder, coming closer, people chasing, cries for help piercing.

I don’t turn around. Instead, I admire the many pretty locomotives in the train yard, including a very old-style iron horse like the one that eventually employed my great-great grandpa. He loved his hobo journey so much he became a boilerman, fueling the train’s roaring iron heart. His son, my great grandpa, followed suit in both war and trains, charging up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders before sailing back home to become a flagman, then brakeman, then conductor. He served through the iron horse heyday, back when they were the symbol of American freedom and progress, back before cars, trucks, and airplanes began peeling away passengers, freight, and glory.

The commotion of voices is closer now, so I let out the regulator a bit as I pass a stunning scale replica of one of the “Big Boys”—rocket-size engines from the 1940s that could pull trains five miles long up mountains.

My dad’s dad came back from France after World War I determined to be an engineer. He made it and eventually got to operate a Big Boy. I can still hear him telling his Big Boy stories, pride flooding every corner of his face. He could not have glowed brighter had he taken one to the moon. He talked little about World War I, saying only that he was called, so he did his duty.

When the song and the yells for help fade into the distance, I let the red-painted regulator out, the signature chug-chug-chug coming faster and faster—the sound of steam being released, valves letting it in and out of the cylinders, like blood through the heart.

The last engine replica I pass is a red-painted diesel. After landing on Omaha Beach in World War II, my father couldn’t carry on the family steam locomotive legacy because diesels had begun elbowing steam engines into museums or tourist rides. So, my dad became a diesel mechanic, keeping the grumbling, stoic, fuel-smelling interlopers running. He was a big believer in progress, always pointing out how far we’d come, how change was often scary but good.

 My dad couldn’t talk about the war. He’d mumble about buddies left lying on the beach, turn away, and grab a wrench.

Past the train yard, the tracks go into lush woods, branches entwining overhead like green sky. The rhythmic clacking of the rails keeps gaining tempo but then levels off, assuring me I’ve not set the regulator too high.

While I admired my dad’s ability to keep diesels running, I wanted to be an engineer like his father. By the time I came home from Vietnam, however, the need for engineers had shriveled. That contributed to the drug problem that began before I came home. Janet, the love of my life, helped me get clean, which allowed me to work my way up at the amusement park, finally becoming the little steam train’s engineer. I then spent my days soaking in the joy on faces, adults and children alike, as the engine took them around the train’s scenic loop.

I let my son sit in the cab with me many times, but I never talked to him about Vietnam. I think that was a mistake, allowing war to be mythologized, leading him to enlist.

When he was a boy, I helped my son build a toy train layout in O-scale—the cars about a foot long. Even while finishing college, he kept adding to it, his model railroad running through a detailed countryside in our basement—done partly for himself, partly for me, and partly for his own son—born just as he finished college. The tracks of my son’s basement train ran past a station, past a miniature train yard, then through trees and over a bridge. It then rose up a gentle slope into a mountain tunnel.

When my son returned from Iraq, homeward bound on a C-137, I met him at the airbase, his coffin flag-draped. His son often asks me about his father during our Papa sessions. He loves the little train layout his father made, keeping it in top shape, and my grandson will now fulfill a train ambition I never dreamed could happen. He’s graduating and joining a team of engineers developing a maglev train they believe will travel 300 mph—at lower cost than an airplane.

When my little steam train reaches a wooden bridge, I say a prayer there will be no war my grandson must survive—even if he survives it.

Past the bridge, the musical clacking of the rail joints relaxes me, bringing a sense of peace as I begin climbing a gentle hill, heading toward a tunnel.

The voices have faded away, but a man now appears on the very back of the train. Someone must have used the pumper to catch me and hop aboard. Looking through the dark haze of smoke that drifts straight back, I see that the man looks like a policeman. He comes ever closer, stepping over and through the little open-topped cars. He’s no older than my grandson, and I now see he’s no policeman. He’s just clothed in old-time conductor’s garb, back when their jackets resembled soldiers’ dress uniforms.

As the engine reaches the tunnel, the young man strides over the coal car and swings around the engine’s cab, squeezing into the seat beside me, ready to end my ride with sharp words.

But he only smiles, smiling like my son used to smile. His arm encircles me, the tunnel swallows us, and I realize I am homeward bound.

– Roger Helms