Off the rails

"The train can go really fast! Look," Henry said. He knew that the other boy wanted to know but he was just too scared to say it. That was alright. Henry can show him. It was always fun to show people the powered rail. "We just have to turn the train on..."

Henry flipped the switch on the bottom of the train and placed it onto the track before the powered track. The train accelerated rapidly at the powered track, but immediately stopped afterwards. Oh. Right. There was no more track after it. He had forgotten all about that.

He laughed, then, picking up the train and switching it off. "Oops!"

"Well, I guess we have to be more careful next time, right?" Henry said, after he had finished laughing. He took a few more rails out of the box and displayed them to Hajime, still grinning. He was happy to see the other boy laugh. He didn't manage to make people laugh very often, but he did like to see people happy. "Look. Here's a ramp, you can make the train go up. You want to try it?"

Henry held out the new rail to Hajime and grinned expectantly. The uphill rails were a bit trickier to connect but Hajime had been good at it so far, he could probably do it.

“Yeah, take your time. It’s a bit hard,” Henry watched as Hajime clicked the tracks together, then smiled broadly when he managed to do it. Hajime was pretty good for a beginner. “There you go!”

Henry connected the downhill track to the uphill track, then put his box at the end of it to prevent the train going all over the place. He turned on the train and handed it to Hajime.

“Here, you have a try. Put it at the beginning of the whole thing, okay?”

Henry watched as the train made its own way along track, going along steadily before it hit the powered rail, at which point it accelerated and went uphill. When it went back down, the train crashed into the plastic box and fell to the side. Cool.

“See? Wasn’t that wicked?” Henry said, excitedly. He liked seeing crashes, but he knew not to do them too much - he’d have to fix them if they broke.

Henry could head that Hajime wanted to know what was in the box. Which was good, because he liked showing other people how all the rails and train parts worked. Not many people like to listen, but that was fine with him.

He pushed the box towards Hajime.

“Here. Take a look. Theres lots of stuff in there.”