"On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe"

 Our third grandson, two and one-half  year old Noah, and his mom came  from

 Connecticut, on Amtrak, to Washington D.C. Union Station.   The next day, Noah was

 playing train, so I sang train songs for him, “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” and “On the

 Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe,” which begins, “Don’t you hear that whistle down

 the line? I’m thinkin’ that it’s engine number 49!”   That night at dinner, without any

 prompting, he sang out, “Down the line!”  Well, I didn’t need any more encouragement 

 and began to work on him with this tune, just as I had with Ben and  “Don’t Sit Under

 the Apple Tree!”   He repeatedly asked me to sing “Down the line,” and I happily

 obliged. I would sing,“Don’t you hear that whistle…,”  and he responded, “Down the

 line!”    “I’m thinkin’ that it’s engine number….”  “Forty-Nine!” he exclaimed.

 A few months later when Noah came to Tulsa, I played the Tommy Dorsey big band

 hit of this tune from the 1940s, and he got up and danced.  After he got a toy

 Thomas the Train, which is Engine Number One, he always followed my pause, “I’m

 thinkin’ that it’s engine number…” by exclaiming, “Number one!”  He would then laugh

 and exalt in teasing me as I made a big show of mock disapproval: “No! No! It’s number

 forty-nine!”  “Number one!” he laughingly insisted.