Stop a Train keeps rolling

The steady improvement that Stop a Train has demonstrated during her nine-race career has been admirable, if not outright remarkable. With virtually every race being better than the one before, Stop a Train will step up to third-level allowance company Wednesday at Arlington Park with a solid chance to parlay that consistency into further success.

Stop a Train, trained by Christine Janks, is one of six fillies and mares entered in the featured eighth race at the Arlington Heights, Ill., track, where two other allowances (races 4 and 7) also will be run on a nine-race card that begins at 1 p.m. Central.

Stop a Train "was very late coming around and developing, but now is actually the first time she's carrying the right amount of weight on her frame," said Janks, who raised the 4-year-old filly on her nearby farm in Barrington. "She's tall and lanky, and I always felt like when she finally matured, all the waiting would pay off. She's a half-sister to Sunset Kisses" - a 5-year-old who won the Aug. 13 Mariah's Storm at Arlington - "and she took quite a bit of time to come around, too."

Stop a Train will be turning back in distance in the Wednesday feature, a $33,000 allowance at one mile. In her last three starts, the filly raced around two turns, most recently in a 1 1/8-mile allowance on July 23, when she held off a pair of pursuers to knock out her second allowance condition.

"She seems to run only as hard as she has to," said Janks. "The same way she trains."

Probably the top rival for Stop a Train is Cachinnated, a Montbrook filly whose early speed makes her a major threat to lead throughout. Trainer Tom Amoss said he is relieved finally to get Cachinnated back on dirt after watching her get drubbed in two straight turf races after he claimed the filly for Maggi Moss in late May.

"We were more a victim of the condition book than anything else," said Amoss. "There just wasn't a lot of opportunity to get her in a spot like this, so we're very pleased that this race on Wednesday filled for us."

The balance of the field is Dottie Booth, Creeker's Surprise, Defuhr, and Sea Dove. Of those, maybe Creeker's Surprise rates the best chance at a mild upset after seeming to want a bit more distance than what she got in her last three starts.