Thomas! The! Tank! Engine!

The morning of the last full day of our visit to Simi Valley was spent riding a life-size Thomas the Tank Engine in Fillmore, CA. They had been advertising the event on PBS and I happened to notice it and actually put two and two together that it was happening during our planned trip to Simi. Luck was with us and Darcy's cousin Alfred was able to go with us -- a good time was had by all! Several different styles of (oh...I have to interupt myself -- there's a coyote loping through the yard! Yay!) historic cars were lined up for the ride. Darcy plopped herself down in this one, which I think reminded her most of Annie and Clarabelle, Thomas's passenger cars. A couple of others were from the 1920s, but this one was a more recent vintage.

Darcy was all giggles through much of the ride. That's not really all that much giggling because the ride, catering as it does to quite-small children, was only 25 minutes long. Michael's Grandmother lives in Fillmore and the train went past her house, but not much further before going back to the depot. We did get to cross a road and see the stopped traffic and go through a tunnel, so it was all good.

Through a fluke conversation, Mimi (Betty) found that a good friend of a good friend is one of the engineers for the historic trains in Fillmore, including the Thomas event, so we got just a little special treatment after our ride was over. Charlie took us up into the engine compartment of the 1960s diesel engine that was doing all the actual work of pulling the train. Alfred sat in the engineer's seat and blew the horn; Darcy was a bit shy of taking a turn. (We'll get all the pics of Alfred to you somehow, D & J!)

Our ride was at 9:50 on a Friday, which we chose in part because it seemed likely to be less crowded than a weekend day. Our train was much less than half full and even with that, there was a bit of chaos afterwards, as the next train was fuller, so many more kids were milling around. Charlie told us that all of Saturday's rides were completely booked and that the previous three-day weekend, they had 17,000 passengers!! That's a whole lot of toddlers in one place at one time! Glad we missed the worst of it.

Among other things, bigger crowds would have made it impossible for Darcy to have played at the train tables they had set up in multiple tents. She had a lot of fun with the different types of tracks -- who knew there were so many options for Thomas trains -- even Duplo/Lego has a set! It explains why they are the corporate sponsor of the Thomas shows on PBS, though.

And, finally, Darcy consented to a picture of Thomas instead of more play. Charlie, our personal connection, is holding her in front of the almost completely decorative Thomas. Darcy returned home with some new Thomas gear, including a kite. This morning, we held the first Cima House Kite Flying Event, with great success. Photos will follow soon.