Connecting With A Train Engineer: My Personal Memories Of Amtrak's Coast Starlight Engineering the Memory of the coast Starlight I never thought that I’d be searching through the archives of my memory for experiences drawn directly from my travels on Amtrak’s Coast Starlight train. The coast Starlight originates in Seattle, Washington and terminates in Los Angeles, California and takes about thirty-five hours to complete its route, if it is running on time. The train has undergone some changes over time, it used to run to San Diego, and recently gained the nickname the Coast Starlate because of it’s tendency to run five to eleven hours behind schedule. Just as an interesting side note, an article online states that from October 2005 to August 2006 the train ran on time two percent of the time. It was during two of these trips that I did notice that lateness and on my last trip which occurred in February, 2005, we ran two hours late into Sacramento and four hours late into Los Angeles. The train does have some of the most spactacular scenery, passing through mountain passes, and over my favorite spot, the Dunsmuir bridge. I haven’t yet taken the train all the way to Seattle from Los angeles, but my next train trip is a plan to do just that. The reason I’m writing a memory of all my Coast Starlight trips to date might surprise you. The engineer, Robert Martin Sanchez, who was killed in the Metrolink 111 crash with a Union Pacific freight train on September 12, 2008 operated the Coast Starlight at some time during his employment with Amtrak. There are two entries on his LATimes memorial page saying nice things about him from one person who met him on the train and one person who dispatched Union Pacific trains from Slo to Moorpark. I have his memorial page marked in my online favorites. Sometimes I just go and read it to reread the nice stories about him. I miss him and I never met him. I read all the nice stories and save the speculation for a quick scan. There’s something comforting about knowing that he operated that train on the same track and route I’ve traveled. I know our time as engineer and passenger did not occur simultaneously. During the time when he was being certified to work with the railroads and being employed with first Union Pacific and then Amtrak and then metrolink and doing whatever else he was doing, I was off completing college classes and giving New year’s day parties. As he was carving his own niche I was involved in childcare, getting involved in some male/female relationships that I subsequently ended due to a variety of reasons, discovering myself musically, getting Internet savvy, and definitely not thinking about trains or train engineers. Oh but of course I did know a rail fan and he did ask me in 1998 to be the RR club secretary. I said no. Ten years later, my friend is deceased, and I was captured by the death of an engineer and now I’m hopelessly interested in trains. It’s what I get for saying no, I suppose. If I had only said yes! Three months after the Metrolink accident that claimed Rob Sanchez’s life I’m still trying to figure out why I made such a conection with him. It could be just the simple fact that he was doing his routine business, I was doing mine; he had pets I have pets. Apparently he showed his dogs, my cats will bearly show themselves and then go hiding in the closet when company comes over; at least one of them does. So our pets are definitely different. We both at the time of September 12, 2008 had our own places of residence only sharing living space with pets, and probably expected to have an ordinary day. This is the closest I can get to an explanation of why there’s such a strong pull on my part toward this person I never met. It will do for now. In his death he touched my life, I’m hard put to explain why. In any case, I am going to dredge through the archives of my memory and see what I can remember about my first ride on that train, a ride which occurred in May of 1978. I was eleven years old. He was sixteen, if our ages are correct. Well if the paper got it right and he was 46 at his time of death then we are four years apart now, the same age difference between me and my sister. Our lives may have been as different as day and night but our age is very close. I have two pictures I’m going to hang of him on my office wall, and I’m sure some who come in here will ask me about them. I’m glad in one way that I can have this connection with him, even if it is a very small one. The Young Girl and the Coast Starlight:Our Trip Down memory Lane As best as I can recall, my first ride on the Coast Starlight took place on may 1, or May 3, 1978. The thing that stands out to me was that I was in the sixth grade and I had been pulled out of school to go up to Oregon to see my grandmother with my mother and sister, my father would meet us later in Sutherlin, the city where my grandmother spent the last twenty-five years of her life. The thing that I remember is that I was supposed to play trumpet in a concert that Friday night, maybe it was may 2. I seem to recall we left Los Angeles on a Wednesday so maybe we did and the concert was on Friday. Anyway at the time I wasn’t looking at my journey with an eye toward recording it. But I do remember sitting on the train at the station. I don’t remember getting on it but I remember sitting in those upholstered, wide seats with lots of leg room and a pull down tray, a scratched window, waiting for it to leave. Thirteen years later I think it was thirteen years later when I had occasion to take it again I wondered if I was in the same car that I had taken in 1978. I remember on a trip long after that when I was either on my way to Dallas or somewhere else that a conductor said that the cars had not been renovated since the 1970s people were looking for places to charge their cell phones and laptops. Back in 1978 when I was on the Coast Starlight for the first time there were no cell phones and no laptops so I didn’t have to listen to people’s conversations. I was eleven years old that time so I don’t really remember much about the trip. I think I have three memories of the trip. The first was playing a piano in a piano bar/dining car playing some song I had written. The second memory is of meeting a lady with her two children whose husband had been in the navy and had died in a drowning accident. Her son’s name was Tommy. He was really interested in cradads, he kept talking about them. He’s probably a fisherman now. Who knows. That was thirty years ago. I remember that at night we were going to cross the Dunsmuir bridge, my mother was anxious about it. I enjoyed that part especially waking up at night when the train was quiet and I could feel it laboring across the bridge or rocking at a tremendous speed to make up lost time. Now that’s my favorite time on a train, steadily clipping along at an imperious speed, rocking the rails, the wheels sliding effortlessly over the dinged rails or smooth new ones, depending on what the freight companies do with their rails, according to train crews who have told me that it is the freight companies who fix the rails. That conversation takes place in a dining car on another Coast Starlight journey, but we’re not quite finished with this one yet. I remember eating our sandwiches and fruit out of the cooler, a tradition I carried on when I took another train trip to Dallas or when I took the Coast Starlight to Sacramento. I honestly don’t remember sitting and waiting for freight trains to pass. I’m sure we did I just don’t remember it. I suddenly recalled that I had read a portion of a story I had written to my mother while we were in the large changing area connected to the bathroom. I don’t remember what she was doing. She might have been doing her hair, it’s a vague memory to be sure. I wrote a story called Love Match with two characters Marshall and Donna and it was about how they met and somehow they had to bowl to see if they would get married or not. Of course because it’s me they have to get married at the end. I don’t even know if I have the story anymore I can’t remember anything about it except a scene where they were dancing. They were dancing and complimenting each other and I rmember my mother said something like wow they sure are buttering each other up. Then I remember that I asked her what she was reading and it was a magazine article about flushing and tampons. Nice kid friendly material. Yep that happened on our first trip on the Coast Starlight. I remember getting to the Eugene Oregon train station and going to a restaurant for lunch or dinner. I don’t know why we didn’t go into Ashland to meet our grandmother maybe it was the mountains. I don’t remember. Maybe it was because she would have to drive through the mountains, who knows. I never asked. That’s about all I remember from the first trip it wasn’t very memorable or I wasn’t looking to remember it. What was rob doing? Don’t know. Watching trains? Counting cars? Probably. The Coast Starlight from the College girls’ Eyes Thirteen years later, a young college student takes a thirteen thousand mile trip across country consisting of a flight to Chicago, Illinois, a flight to Dallas Texas, another flight to Dallas after staying in Clovis New Mexico for a week, a three or four hour wait at the train station in Dallas for a train called the Sunset Limited, I think it was. The idea was to take the Sunset Limited from Dallas to Los Angeles, a trip that would take two days, and then hop the Coast Starlight to Eugene to spend another week with my grandmother, then hop the Coast Starlight again from Eugene to Los Angeles. I remember thinking that once I got to Los Angeles I was thirty minutes from home, I could probably get on a train and get to Fullerton and then just stay home. I had an extra suitcase full of things I wasn’t going to need once I got to my grandmother’s place, but I didn’t do that. I waited in the station and then I got on the train and here we were off again on the coast Starlight. Memories of the return trip merge with those of the beginning of the second CSL journey so I’m not sure what happened when. I remember having dinner in the dining car with two ladies from the south, black ladies and a boy, and a white woman. The reason I remember this so vividly is that at the time Jesse Jackson was running for president and I remember the boy who was black saying that if Jesse Jackson won the presidency that would be interesting. I remember it got quiet at the table. That’s all I really remember about that particular conversation. I don’t remember the food or anything, how’s that for excitement! There was another thing I remember, standing in the hallway by the bathroom talking to a guy and a girl standing on a crate because there was water coming out of the bathroom and I didn’t want to get my socks wet. It was the crate that was used as a step down from the car to the station. And I don’t’ remember those car doors opening automatically and closing, either. I remember sitting in the dining or the lounge car with some people saying that politics and religion were not subjects under discussion. Someone said they knew the engineer. I said could I go see the cab and the girl said the engineer said absolutely not. That’s not very much either, is it? What I do remember is getting to Los Angeles, late, as usual, those darn freights. And then getting on another train to Fullerton and there was Curly to meet me. So I go back to the Fullerton station even back then, don’t I. It was a long two month trip. It was fun and I enjoyed it but I sure don’t remember much about the Coast Starlight. I do remember sitting in the observation car the one with the dome. Someone described to me cabbage fields, junk cars, box cars, who knows what else. I remember waking up one time and we were stopped somewhere and I never figured out why. I heard someone say that there had been a traveler who had a heart attack and they took them off the train but I never figured that out. I don’t even remember where we were I know we had left Oregon and we were somewhere in California but I don’t remember where we were. I don’t even know if that was true. Life progressed and in November 2004 I hopped the Coast Starlight with my friend and her four kids, Robert, Andrew, Melanie and Kara to a convention in Sacramento. In February, 2005, the year Rob went to work for Metrolink, I took the coast Starlight by myself to Woodland. Here is some information that will become important throughout this story. The Coast Starlight traverses not only beautiful mountains, but also the industrial and residential sections of the Union Pacific Slo to Moorpark territory, extending to Santa Susanna’s pass and that painful stretch between the Chatswroth station and the Simi Valley station, the stretch where Rob’s accident occurred. I wonder how I’ll feel the next time I go through that section on this train. I already went over it once this year and that experience wasn’t as bad as I anticipated. But it’s always an emotional stretch for me and I can never pass it without thinking of that accident. Some might say I never stop thinking about it. They might be right. In November 2004, the train clips its way along the route with me on it, and there are a few things I remember. First of all with the kids, watching “March of the penguins” boring film, but it was on, there was another movie on but that sound system was bad and why should we watch movies on the train? The people on the train are better than the movie: drinking, talking, laughing, and then there’s looking out the window, the industrial areas, abandoned cars, housing tracts, the back side of American’s cities, as one Orange County Register travel editor described it. There were the many trips to the dining car and the distinct memory of the guy behind the counter slipping a pre made hamburger into the microwave, the beep beep as he set it, the sounds of the bells at the crossings ringing as we passed them, leaving those lonely cars behind, waiting for us, and then sitting and waiting for freights. The conductor got on the P.A. and said that we were waiting for some freight somewhere and we sat there for a while. This was between Simi Valley and L.A. but I don’t know where. Maybe it was on that famous curve of track just out of Santa susanna’s pass. You know now they’re saying that Rob had the green light on that fateful day in September when he pulled out of chatsworth, or at least the conductor and retired rail fans are saying that. The NTSB stubbornly maintains that light was red. If that light was green, why was a freight train coming out of the tunnel? Why was a switch in place to move the freight onto a side rail while the metrolink went about its business. I don’t know. It makes me happy thinking that red signal might have been dimmer than it should have been, ok it doesn’t take much to make me emotional when it comes to the Chatsworth train wreck. I know it doesn’t change anything, but it might in a very fluid stage of the accident investigation for me anyway lend some validity to the question of why a veteran engineer who’d pass safety tests eight months earlier had to go screaming into a freight train. Could someone who had been on that stretch of track a million times )ok a little exaggerated but at least that many times) really not be paying attention even if he was text messaging? And here’s something very unofficial. When the article first came out that purported that Rob’s light was green, there were some comments made about it online. I had to enter the discussion. Someone asked if Rob might have had the sun in his eyes and I said that was a good question. The responder said that no that is anorth and south grack out of Chatsworth, he “should have been seeing that signal out of the station.” Well this is by no means official so don’t’ quote me but if rob should have been seeing the signal out of the station, and he’d been on that track countless times, and if he was a veteran engineer working for various companies for twelve years, then maybe he did see that signal as green. Forget if he was text messaging. We’ll have to ask him. I don’t’ think I want to ask him. Meanwhile, back in the past, and not the bloody, confusing, tearful present, on that day, the day when we are heading up to Sacramento on the Coast Starlight, we spend a lot of time in the diner, or we sit and wait for freights. I don’t remember much about the trip to Sacramento. I do remember that we are very very late into Sacramento and that surprises me? Ha, hardly. Not with California’s congested train corridor sharing sixty-six percent of track with freight traffic. Do you know I heard that freight traffic was supposed to double by 2020. Apparently fifty freight trains a day make their way out of the port of Los Angeles right now. If one hundred trains make their way out of the port of Los Angeles by the year 2020, That means they darn well better get that ETMS installed or there are going to be more accidents like that one. Speaking of Rob’s accident and we were, I read that the odtopsy report showed he died of massive trauma injuries to the torsoe and lower body. He sufferd an “agregious loss of blood” the report stated. I don’t think I’ve ever read that word in conjunction with blood loss. Crime, yes, but blood? No. Essentialy, Rob Sanchez died by getting sliced in half by a freight train. I don’t recall much else about the trip with the kids to Sacramento. We had a return trip and I don’t remember that either. I guess this Coast Starlight trip is really memorable, perhaps what makes it memorable now is the fact that Rob engineered the Coast Starlight and that’s the connection. Fashionably late…for a Train The last time I took the coast Starlight was a few months later, February 2005 when I went to Woodland to interview a man who worked for the city and for one of the businesses at the Fullerton airport. I remember the most about this train trip; sitting downstairs and reading a report that he had written, sleeping, trying to talk to Steve on the phone when we didn’t have very good reception, getting to Davis late at night and a commuter complaining about how long the train took, and a senior complaining at the return trip that they were never going to take the train again because it was so late. The highlight of that trip is the guy from England taking a train trip and sitting in the café car playing Uno or was it a different card game and someone saying we would get in trouble for gambling because we were on a federally owned vehicle. The conversation was pretty funny I told him to come sit with us he was all alone and if he wanted to play the card game to come on over. There were the meals in the dining car, the conductor saying we were running late “thanks for your patience folks” he says. The engineer probably wanted to get some shut-eye. It was late, I( think we all wanted to get some shut-eye. We got into L.A. at 2:00 in the morning. Then there was the trip by Amtrak bus to Fullerton, and the person on the bus asking me if I knew where I was. There was the freight train clattering through the station and then the wait for the cab, and then finally the trip home and bed. Good night Mr. Coast Starlight engineer whoever you were! How many times did rob take that train into Union Station late? Probably more times than he could count. Probably more times than I could count. Rob’s Wall I’m a little bit disappointed that I can’t remember more from my trips. I’ve managed to put together four pages on three different trips from the Coast starlight. I’m sure my next trip I’ll be paying a lot more attention. The coast Starlight is going to make it’s way into my home office along with the pictures I have of Rob to hang on my wall. I’ve dubbed this wall “Rob’s Wall” because it’s going to have two pictures and then some shots of scenery from the Coast Starlight. I know where I might be able to find some. If I can’t get anyone to sell me their pictures I’ll have to resort to taking my own and maybe I’ll just do that anyway. I’m sure I can find a rail fan on the coast Starlight to take a picture of a mountain pass. Notes: 1. the number of fifty trains a day came from a documentary called “Freight Trains” from the show “Modern Marvels” on the history channel. 2. Quotes from Rob’s audtopsy report are taken from the article Autopsy finds no drugs or alcohol in body of train engineer in Chatsworth Metrolink crash” L.A. Times, December 4, 2008. 3. Chronology of Rob’s employment was taken from “Engineer led solitary life marred by tragedy” L.A. Times, September 17, 2008. 4. the references to the history and route of the Coast Starlight are taken from the online article “Coast Starlight: Information from Answers.com.”
Copyright © 2008 Shelley J Alongi |