Back in 1958, I was crazy about the Norfolk and Western 746. The smooth bullet-nose engine with its orange and yellow lines and shiny streamlined black tender (车厢) seemed to have cast a spell on me.

Together the engine and tender measured a little shy of 2 feet—enormous by the toy train standards of the day. Even better, the 746 had a working headlight and smoker, and its tender sang high.

Unfortunately, the amazing 746 also had an amazing price—$50, equal to about $450 today. That was far more than my grandfather could afford. Instead, I had to be content with his little Lionel plastic, which was SIX INCHES shorter than the 746 and had no headlight, no smoker or no sound! But that was the best that my grandfather could give me at that time.

Years passed, and I was in my 30s. Complicated sound systems and computer controls dominated toy trains. I never gave a look. My interest in toy trains, I firmly believed, had faded, nor did my admiration for the 746, since my grandfather was not with me. The 746 was never called to mind. On an ordinary day, however, I happened to see the 746 outside the window of a train show. Just one look, I could not look away. Childhood memories that I tried to hide in the depths of my heart raced through my mind, happy or sad.

That day I took the 746 home and placed it in the centre of the room, and let my childhood dream sing its way around me. Smoke rose out from the engine and the soft song sounded from its tender. It seemed as if I could see the soft light in grandfather’s eyes and hear his cheerful laughter.

Sisters Gipsy and Gelssy Rodriguez of Anaheim, California, are the social media powerhouses behind their parents’ popular quincea era dress shop, Moda2000.

The store has more than 3.3 million followers on TikTok, 200,000 followers on Instagram and even has its own You Tube TV show, “Quince Empire”.

In 2015, social media was gaining popularity and the sisters saw this as an opportunity to help get the word out about Moda2000. Gipsy and Gelssy Rodriguez taught themselves about social media strategy on the fly, and decided to post videos of their clothes first to YouTube and Instagram, and eventually to TikTok.

“We kind of just posted a video not knowing what was going to happen,” Gipsy Rodriguez said. “TikTok was new at the time…and we posted and. we went to dinner that night and our phones were just blowing up.”

Their first TikTok video — which now has 1.4 million likes — drove 10,000 followers to their newly-created account overnight. Going viral (疯传) changed their business in ways the Rodriguez family could never have imagined. “It’s just so crazy,” Gipsy Rodriguez said. “Now we’re getting those clients that have been following us and watching our videos since they were little girls…I think it’s so beautiful that they get to grow up with us.”

While their parents are still very involved in the store, Gipsy and Gelssy Rodriguez, who now serve as the brand’s creative director and store’s operations director, respectively, are slowly taking over the reins.

For the whole family, Moda2000’s growth has felt representative of the “American Dream“. “My parents literally started with $0 from anybody else, and to this day, we haven’t taken any outside capital or anything like that,” Gelssy Rodriguez said. “And not only did they make such a successful business, but they also made an impact within the industry that we are in and we’ve become industry leaders”