Quick quiz: What's the name of the car that carries a steam engine's coal?

I know I certainly had no idea. The only reason I ever gained that piece of information is that every car in Marc's Thomas the Tank Engine railroad is labeled on the bottom. Of the trains he has, only Gordon has a separate one - all the others are attached. He's always called it "Gordon's piece" or the "choo-choo piece".

Today, he was playing with them while I was driving and he held it up and said "That's a tender." I guess he probably got it from a book read to him at school, but it was weird to hear such a specific term come out of his mouth. :)

He's also decided that he'd rather read those books to himself. One day, he was looking at his Thomas lift-the-flap book and started reading it. And the words he was saying were almost exactly what was on each page. It kind of weirded me out until I realized that they must have the same book at his day care and he's memorized it from me reading it and them reading it. He goes page by page and has me read one page over and over (each page has about 4 rhyming lines) until he's memorized it. Then he takes the book and reads it to himself.