19/20 - The Electric Train Set in the Attic Doesn't Make Sense

The idea that the attic could possibly have accommodated a functioning electric train set, circling around the attic, doesn’t make sense.

There was no electric train set in the attic

In her open letter published in The New York Times, Dylan Farrow claims:

He (Woody Allen) told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me. He talked to me while he did it, whispering that I was a good girl, that this was our secret, promising that we’d go to Paris and I’d be a star in his movies. I remember staring at that toy train, focusing on it as it traveled in its circle around the attic. To this day, I find it difficult to look at toy trains.

Before 2014, neither the court document, nor the prosecutor’s statement, nor the Yale-New Haven report (listing nine interviews with Dylan Farrow), nor any document or article in the press refers to Dylan Farrow or Mia Farrow reporting the presence of a train in the attic during Allen sex crime allegation.

In his May 23, 2018 essay Moses wrote:

It’s a precise and compelling narrative, but there’s a major problem: there was no electric train set in that attic. There was, in fact, no way for kids to play up there, even if we had wanted to. It was an unfinished crawl space, under a steeply-angled gabled roof, with exposed nails and floorboards, billows of fiberglass insulation, filled with mousetraps and droppings and stinking of mothballs, and crammed with trunks full of hand-me-down clothes and my mother’s old wardrobes.

The idea that the space could possibly have accommodated a functioning electric train set, circling around the attic, is ridiculous. One of my brothers did have an elaborate model train set, but it was set up in the boys’ room, a converted garage on the first floor. (Maybe that was the train set my sister thinks she remembers?) Now, whenever I hear Dylan making a public statement about what allegedly happened to her that day when she was barely seven, I can only think of that imaginary train set, which she never brought up during the original investigation or custody hearing. Did somebody suggest to the adult Dylan that such a specific detail would make her story more credible? Or does she really believe she remembers this train “circling around the attic” the same way she says she remembers Woody’s whispered promises of trips to Paris and movie stardom (kind of odd enticements to offer a 7-year-old, rather than a new toy or a doll)?

Story never made the slightest bit of sense: Why would anyone, particularly a wealthy actress who lives in a mansion, with several children’s rooms and playrooms, ever set up an operating train set in a crawl space attic off of her bedroom?!

— Phil Renzulli (@phil_renzulli) March 16, 2021

The electric train set and the HBO documentary

Intellectually Dishonest Propaganda Meets Emotional Blackmail

As for the existence of the train, it’s not quite the smoking gun the filmmakers want it to be. Would its existence, as Allen v. Farrow suggests, discredit the account of the pro-Allen Farrow sibling, Moses Farrow, who wrote in 2018 that “there was no electric train set in that attic”? One of Allen’s staunchest defenders, documentary filmmaker Robert Weide, argues that the operative word is “electric”: Dylan has described an electric train that “traveled in its circle around the attic,” while the toy train track shown in the police drawing is just four feet in diameter, and there is no indication that it was electric. (Weide also points to trial testimony by Farrow-friendly nanny Kristi Groteke, who said that a large “train car” for children to ride in, with a plastic track, was stored in the attic’s crawl space and sometimes taken out for play elsewhere in the house.) Either way, the issue of the train does not seem dispositive: whether or not Dylan was molested in the attic, it’s quite possible that she saw some kind of toy train there and misremembered it as a large electric train set. – Cathy Young, ‘Allen v. Farrow’: Intellectually Dishonest Propaganda Meets Emotional Blackmail

The Case of the Magical, Disappearing Electric Toy Train Set

“There are some pictures and there is a trunk where things are stored, and there is a train set which the children take out and play with sometimes.” When asked to describe the set, Groteke replies, “They are big, heavy plastic, green tracks and they fit into each other like puzzle pieces, and the train is a train car that is made for a child to sit on and ride.” Alter asks, “Have you ever seen the train set in any of the rooms?” Groteke: “Yes. I have seen it downstairs in the living room, but more recently in the past year in Mia’s room and in the children’s room, through the hallways.” Alter: “So they take it out of the crawl space?” Groteke: “Yes.” – Robert Weide, FARROW v. FARROW: The Case of the Magical, Disappearing Electric Toy Train Set

Some questions about the electrical train set in the HBO documentary

The documentary doesn’t show the attic. Why?

The police report shows a sketch of the attic… but no photos?

The electrical train set is not mentioned by Dylan in the videotape

Immediately after the alleged abuse, Mia Farrow took Dylan to her pediatrician. Dylan did not repeat the accusation of sexual abuse during this visit. Once back at home, Mia Farrow videotaped Dylan during two or three days: never Dylan mentioned the electrical train set.