ChatGPT: "The Poisoned Track"

There's nothing wrong with asking ChatGPT (or any of the other AI tools) about model railroads, right? I've played around a bit - asking it to describe fictional towns or a packing house in a 1930's California farm town. The generated text always seems a little rough or awkward, but I suspect it's got its uses for brainstorming. I couldn't get Google's Gemini AI tool to design track plans, but it keeps borrowing the same track plan image from some site on the Internet.

Wonder if it can put a model railroad into a story?

"describe a dashiell hammett murder mystery involving a model railroad"

Oh, my. I've got my issues with the story, but the whole "Something was off about the layout" sounds like a good hook for some good old human creativity.

Try for yourself here.

Title: The Poisoned Track

It was the kind of night that made you want to lock the door and bury yourself in a bottle of bourbon. The rain was coming down hard, the streetlamps barely cutting through the thick, swirling fog. I was nursing my second whiskey when the phone rang. A woman’s voice—steady, sharp, and as cold as the night air—cut through the haze of the bar.

“Mr. Alden?” she asked, like she already knew I’d be there.

“Yeah?”

“My name’s Marla Durant. My husband’s dead. I need you to find out who killed him.”

I straightened up, the weight of her words sinking in, cutting through the liquor fog.

“Dead, huh?” I asked, glancing at the reflection of my face in the dirty mirror behind the bar. “What makes you think it’s murder?”

“The way he died,” she said, her voice dropping to a near whisper. “He was shot, but that’s not what’s bothering me. It’s how he was found.”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “You mind telling me more?”

“He was found in his study,” she said. “In front of his model railroad.”

Marla Durant was a tall, elegant woman in her late 30s—dark hair, sharp cheekbones, the kind of woman who could make a man’s heart skip a beat and his wallet empty in a second. She met me at the door of her mansion in Pacific Heights, wearing an expression that said she’d already seen too much for one lifetime.

The house was quiet, as if it had been holding its breath since her husband had died. She led me up the winding staircase and into the study, where the scene had been found.

It was a room I’d seen in a thousand men’s fantasies—mahogany shelves filled with books, heavy leather chairs, and an oak desk polished to a perfect sheen. But there was something strange about it, something that didn’t sit right. The thing that stuck out wasn’t the expensive furniture, or even the faint smell of gunpowder that still hung in the air. It was the model railroad.

It sprawled across the floor, winding in and out of miniature hills, through tiny stations, around ponds and rivers that looked like they could’ve been real if you squinted hard enough. The tracks were arranged with military precision, and there, near the center of the room, sat a small, delicate train—the kind that looked like it belonged in a museum more than a man’s private study.

And there, slumped over the desk, was Patrick Durant—his face pale, eyes wide open, the gunshot wound to the back of his head a clean, efficient kill. The revolver was resting just beside his hand, like someone had made sure it looked like a suicide. But something didn’t sit right.

There was a small train set at the far end of the room, nestled near a large model of a station house. It was different from the rest of the set—off, like a jigsaw piece that didn’t belong. The tracks seemed slightly bent, the cars slightly out of place. My instincts were on edge. I knew it was important, but I didn’t know why.

Patrick Durant was a quiet man by all accounts—wealthy, successful, a former stockbroker who had made a killing when the market was still roaring. But his real passion, the one thing he’d loved more than his business empire, was his model railroad. It was his obsession, something he’d spent years building. And it was something he kept locked away from the world—his sanctuary.

But then there was the question of his wife, Marla. I dug into their past, and what I found wasn’t pretty. Marla Durant wasn’t just the grieving widow—she had her own set of problems, ones that didn’t take too long to dig up. She’d been involved in some shady dealings, things that had nothing to do with her husband’s wealth. There were rumors about gambling, debts, and men who didn’t take kindly to being stiffed.

But nothing pointed directly to murder—not yet, anyway.

I spent hours going over the model railroad. It wasn’t just the tracks—it was the trains themselves, and the way they ran. Something was off about the layout, something I couldn’t put my finger on. I could feel the obsession in every inch of the track, in every tiny piece of scenery. This wasn’t just a hobby; this was a man who had poured every ounce of his soul into this little world.

Then I found it.

A hidden compartment. A small, well-concealed safe buried beneath the track near the station house. Inside the compartment was a ledger—carefully hidden, and filled with names, dates, and figures that didn’t belong in a model railroad. They were business transactions—shady deals, loans, and payments to a few names I recognized: some of the more dangerous men in the city.

I knew immediately what had happened. Patrick Durant had been involved in something he couldn’t get out of—a web of debts, illegal dealings, and people who wouldn’t hesitate to put him six feet under. And that model railroad? It was his way of hiding the evidence, a tiny, miniature world where he could keep his secrets safe.

The breakthrough came when I learned about a man named Alex “Big Al” Crawford—a former business partner of Durant’s. Crawford was the kind of guy who didn’t play by the rules, and he had a reputation for making people disappear when they became liabilities. Durant had been trying to cut ties with him, and that’s when the pressure started to build. But Big Al wasn’t the type to let go without taking something in return.

It all came crashing down when I found a letter, carefully hidden among the tracks—an unsigned note with a single line of text:

"Track 13. Final payment due."

I stared at it for a long time before it clicked. Track 13. There was no Track 13 on the model. But there was something wrong with the layout—a missing piece of track, a gap that should have been filled. The more I looked at the set, the more I realized the significance of the note. Durant had been trying to get out. He’d made a deal with Big Al, but he wasn’t going to make his final payment.

Big Al had come to collect, and Patrick Durant had fought back. But in the end, it was no contest. Durant had been too deep in, and the man who was supposed to be his partner had become his executioner.

When I confronted Marla, she didn’t deny it. She wasn’t the one who had killed her husband, but she knew who had. Big Al had made her a deal—help him cover up the murder, and he’d make sure she wasn’t left with nothing. But the deal had gone sideways, as they always do. Durant had been killed, the tracks had been rearranged, and Marla was left holding the bag.

She didn’t cry when I arrested her. She didn’t scream. She just stood there, eyes cold as stone, watching as the whole thing unraveled around her.

As I walked out into the rain, the sound of a train whistle echoed in my mind. The case was closed, but the model railroad still haunted me. In the end, it wasn’t just the trains that were moving in circles—it was the lies, the secrets, and the people who thought they could bury them beneath tiny tracks. But nothing stays hidden forever.

The poisoned track had claimed its final victim.