This Storybook Train Ride Is Just the Ticket

A sea of pajama-clad children squirms on the rail car’s ancient wooden benches, too excited to sit still. They drop toys, throw mittens and slosh hot chocolate. Smiling adults perch among them, wrapped in bathrobes, looking on with amusement.

Outside in the frigid dark, the hills gather the new-fallen snow around them like a flannel blanket. The old steam engine pulls the train, clickety-clacking past twinkly towns . . . on its way to the North Pole. It is a magical trip with imagination as its destination and lifelong memories as a souvenir.

If it all sounds a bit like a scene from a fanciful children’s tale, that’s because it is. Around the country, a dozen trains embark on trips mirroring this one, reenacting the story from “The Polar Express,” in which children climb out of their beds on Christmas Eve and board a special train to the North Pole.

The book is about the magic that comes from a child’s ability to believe. The train ride aims to do the same.

Kelly and Shane Smith drove 1 1/2 hours from Tooele so their four young children could ride the Polar Express and come away with their own mental keepsakes.

“Especially this year we wanted to do something as a family,” said Kelly Smith. “We want to make memories for the kids.”

The train trips have been popular since their inception about five years ago, but this year appears to be exceptional. All 36 trips on the Heber Valley Railroad are sold out. And there already are 3,200 names on the waiting list for next year’s trains--nearly twice the load they can handle. Railroads across the country report the same surging demand. Some operators suggest that since the September terrorist attacks, parents are embracing holiday traditions and the comfort of the familiar.

The same sentiment seems to be showing up in shopping malls around the country, where Santa and his elves are exceptionally busy. At the 900 North Michigan Shops in downtown Chicago, an elaborate Santa display has returned after a 10-year absence, a response to demand from parents.

Said Barbara Corrigan, spokeswoman for the high-rise shopping complex, “This year they want warm and fuzzy.”

“The Polar Express” story is all that. First published in 1985, the award-winning book has sold more than 4 million copies. Its theme of a child’s ability to believe in an unknowable concept, like Santa, seems to be striking a chord this holiday season.

Author-illustrator Chris Van Allsburg said he’s not sure why the book and the train rides it inspired are popular now, but it may have something to do with the certainty provided by holidays.

“When people feel the world is an uncertain place, you try to include in your life certainties. The celebration of Christmas is one way of accomplishing that,” he said from his home in Providence, R.I. “There’s nothing like traditions to give rise to feelings of stability.”

Many parents who bundled their children into PJs and robes on a recent cold night said the train ride was part of an effort to spend more time together.

“We’re hoping this will become a tradition,” said Trish Olson, whose 6-year-old son, Alec, bounced on his seat. “This brings back the magic of Christmas, like it was when I was a kid. I don’t see that too much now. I know that sounds corny, but I mean it, especially now. After the attacks, you just wanted to go grab your kids and hug them.”

The 90-minute round trip is a boisterous affair, led by a doughty engine built in 1907, affectionately called the Heber Creeper. Each of the six cars features a cast of elves and a reader, who keeps the children busy by leading songs and telling jokes before reading the book.

The cast, volunteers from the Heber Valley Arts Council, is directed by Bob Donahue, who produced off-Broadway shows but never envisioned a career as elf wrangler.

The passengers range from newborns to teenagers and senior citizens. The most intrepid arrive in nightclothes--a colorful collection of flannel, chenille robes and motley slippers.

Kathy Robinson tucks her four grandchildren under a quilt and looks out the window as the Provo River and then Spring Creek slide by. More children are in the aisles, popping up behind seats to startle grandparents and jumping to jingle the bells on the caps of passing elves.

As the train nears the North Pole, Donahue radios that unless the train slows down, the readers won’t get through the story.

One reader, Korey Walker, delights the children in his full cowboy regalia: big hat, a red shirt and wide suede chaps. Walker, a local rancher, says the best thing about the trip is watching the kids.

“They have a belief in something you can’t put a physical touch to,” he said. “That’s pretty special.”

In each car, just as the book is finished, elves tell the children they’re about to see Santa.

“Look out the right side of the train!”

The children rush to the fogged windows, which squeak as pajama sleeves are rubbed on the glass. Ahead in the dark is a red glow. Santa, illuminated by a sputtering emergency flare, stands in the snow and waves at the train.

Now Santa boards for the return trip. But the train has grown so long that one Santa cannot work his way to all the kids. The drill is to sneak a “sleeper” Santa on at the start and have the two St. Nicks work the cars from opposite ends.

The smuggled Santa, Lowell Larsen, is pulling on his costume in the bar car. He tells of wisdom hard-won in the trenches: “When Santa walks in, the kids go nuts. Some of them run at you from clear across the car and jump on you. You gotta watch your back. Literally.”

Larsen blusters into a car where children have been singing “Here Comes Santa Claus.” Screams greet him.

For Dorran and Karen Sampson and their four boys, the trip is a stab at creating new Christmas memories after a fire last Dec. 27 burned down their home.

“We had nothing left but the socks on our feet,” Karen Sampson said, cheerfully decked out in pajamas.

Dorran, pulling the cord of his bathrobe tighter, looked at his sheepish sons standing in their nightclothes in a crowded waiting room at the Heber City depot.

“After the attacks, we are trying to incorporate more traditional events in our family,” he said. “We are trying to find something to connect to. This may be it.”