The railway beneath the table

An original literary non-fiction-style account of dismantling a model railway before a family visit.

My brother asked whether I could move the model railway out of the dining room for his visit. Six people would need to eat there. I replied that the track could not simply be folded away like a tablecloth. He said he understood, which annoyed me more than an argument would have done.

For three evenings, I studied the screws holding the baseboards together. I had spent years adding streets, signals and tiny gardens. From my chair, I could see a whole town that obeyed the limits I had given it. The dining table, meanwhile, was a narrow shelf beneath a viaduct. We usually ate in the kitchen.

I began by lifting the station roof. Under it lay a pencil with my daughter's old tooth marks in the paint. She had used it when we drew the platform together. She was now tall enough to look down on the roofs without standing on a chair. When I showed her the pencil, she remembered giving every passenger a name. I had forgotten that part.

She offered to help label the wires. We numbered the connectors and photographed each section before separating it. The boards were still awkward and heavy, but the work was less mysterious once two of us were doing it. One hillside would not fit through the doorway. We removed three trees, wrapped them in tissue and put them beside their empty holes.

On the day of the visit, the boards rested under the table on wooden blocks. My brother asked where the town had gone. My daughter pulled back the cloth and showed him the station. Later, while we ate, I found myself describing the named passengers rather than the new signal system. I still wanted to rebuild everything after the visit. For the first time, I also wondered whether the railway needed to occupy the room every day.

Explain how dismantling the railway changes the narrator's view of it.