Metrolink111: A Crush On The Engineer My collection of Italian soda glasses is growing. I now have six glasses from the Spaghetti Factory that say Fortieth Anniversary since the restaurant traditionally placed by the railroad tracks has been flourishing it seems since 1969 in different locations and this particular one in Fullerton since 1984. You can sit in an old rail car, a booth that is supposed to resemble one and look out the picture windows at the long, steel freights that sweep by the diners and the railfans on the platform gathered in knots talking automobiles, politics, philosophy, religion, and maybe sometimes trains. Tonight, Monday September 28 is one of those nights where everything gets covered, and I learn more about the people who are on the platform than about the trains that unite us. We all have different stories about how we became enamored with trains. �I used to have a life before trains,� I say in discussing something about my history, something I don�t quite remember now. Was it my religious upbringing? We discuss that, too. �I like to say that I was too tired when I lay on that couch and watched that Chatsworth accident footage. If I hadn�t been so tired I�d probably be okay.� I�m not okay; I�m standing on the platform waving at engineers who all make way more money that I do and who hopefully aren�t in as much financial hot water as I am. Maybe they�re divorced, sick, single, married with children, grand children, in debt, all encumberd with the things we all seem to do and the responsibilities we take on. All of us standing here on the platform may be escaping our responsibilities for now but we�ll all return to them after we say good night to the trains. It is after we all disperse after one final freight passes us that I go to the Spaghetti Factory and indulge my love of Italian cream soda, use the ladies� room, and get my Italian soda glass. I make my way out to the station and curt finds me and we go to the bus stop by that time it is almost 10:00 PM and today has been a good day. I turned down an eight hour shift and overtime to go to the Southern California Train Travel meet up group. I talked about looking for engineers, waving at them and discuss what I would like to have a talking GPS say to me. Someone asked how a blind person found something I don�t remember what it was now and somehow that led to a discussion of the GPS. I think the question was how did I find the restaurant where the group meets and that led to the discussion. �I want my talking GPS to say, Shelley, that engineer thinks you�re weird, or Shelley that engineer is looking right at you, or oh my God that conductor says not her again! No!� Train Talk I ask Chris Guenzler what line Metrolink 405 serves and he says it leaves Los Angeles at 6:00 in the morning and goes to Riverside. But I can�t find it on the schedule. Train 405 is the one I heard transmitting on the scanner at 6:00 in the morning, the engineer who was extremely cheerful for that time of day. Good for him! My hat is off to you, sir. We talk about accidents but not mine. There is an article in the Sunday L.A. Times called �Death on the Rails� that shows places where people have died and there is some argument at the stats for Metrolink verses the Gold, blue, and red lines which operate significantly less trackage than Metrolink who operates 480 miles of track. So far, Metrolink has held up these days except there is some discussion that the reporters in the paper have left out the fact that people sometimes are drum, walk on the tracks, want to kill themselves or just aren�t paying attention. When you have one of the most crowded train coridors in the country and the most densely populated areas one is bound to have an accident. Why don�t they say that? The L.A. Times hates trains I say and some agree. The L.A. Times doesn�t like texting Metrolink engineers that�s for sure. Where to go from Here At 4:20 I show up at Noelwood because I�ve gotten off early and me the connection with the 47 bus, found the restaurant and decided what I want to order. Make that 4:45 or so, I am the earliest one there, Pat shows up after that as do Ken an Dan. Chris Guenzler comes along, and soon the restaurant hums with the buzz of train conversation and the cooks get busy preparing all our orders. It�s a big group, maybe 25? I don�t know for sure. Steve, the group organizer and partial owner of trainweb.com shows up without his wife Barbara. I sit at a table by myself engrossed in my food and Steve tells me that lots of people are sitting somewhere else. When I finish my food I tell him I will definitely go over there. I am so hungry I�m reluctant to move but soon I carry my basket of French fires and my huge soda cup over to another table and sit with Chris Guenzler and Pat and Winston. I�m sure there was someone else but I don�t remember who it was. We discuss other things at the table, trains being backed up, engineers plugging the train, stopping it almost on a dime to avoid hitting something or someone. I can�t remember how he described it; was like the engineer pulls the main break lever and the air and something else stopping the train immediately if not sooner. I think of Glen operating his Metrolink 608 train with a smooth hand, pulling that lever just so, sliding that train into its position. The train the engineer plugs Chris says stops alright, he falls, the guy who is operating the bar flips over the bar, Chris hits a wall or something but he�s okay. He gets up to see if the train hits a car the engineer sees approaching the tracks. Chris says the car stops a few feet from the tracks. �Was the engineer okay?� I wanted to know. I have this thing about engineers. IN fact later on when I go back to the station and see Bob and Janice on the benches near the east end of the platform I tell Bob �I still think the engineer has more power than the conductor� and he says �I know nothin.� I just start laughing because in so many ways it�s true. hey, today I learned how to plug a train. Just hope I never have to do it. A Crush on the Metrolink Engineer About 6:45 I decide I want to go to the station and wave at Glen so I get up and use the restroom and talk to Larry for a minute who is in conversation with someone else. He tells me to wait which is fine, and Steve who says he lived at the station for fifteen years when trainweb.com was housed above the Amtrak office drives me over to the south side of the station. I pace back and forth waiting for my engineer. I�ve told everyone the story of how I held up the train and someone tells the table that Metrolink trains have a two minute stopping period at the station and so they will wait if someone is really trying to make an effort to get to the train. �Who was it?� Chris asks when I mention that the conductor on that train two weeks ago said the engineer�s name. I stop, not sure what he means. �Who is the conductor on the 608 train?� �I don�t know his name,� I admit. Chris says it�s probably someone named Richard, I didn�t catch his last name. When I go to Chatsworth again I�ll have to look for him and ask his name. Tonight I�m standing and waiting for Glen. A group of people across the tracks talk and laugh and then theirs the bell ,the train sliding slowly to its stop, smoothly, confidently, easily. Glen sets the brakes. I wave. I stand there just holding my giant soda and my cane and my trainweb.com bag, smiling. I hoe he sees me. If he doesn�t I�ll just pretend he sees me. Someday I�m going to talk to him. Larry on the patio says I should tap on the glass, get Glen�s attention. But I�m still kind of shy about that. One day I�m going to touch that train I�m so curious about it. Some can see it with their eyes but I have to touch the train. The stop is for such a short time I�m almost afraid to touch the train but some day I�m going to go up to the train and touch it or maybe if not at fullerton I�ll do it somewhere else. People always come up and ask me if I need to find the train. Really, the only people, and I may have said this before, who ask me if I need help at the station, are the Metrolink riders. Metrolink riders are stressed out I suppose. Maybe the engineer is stressed out, too. Don�t worry, Glen, I know where that yellow line is and I won�t stand in front of your train. It occurs to me sometimes that I act as if I have a crush on Glen the Metrolink engineer. Maybe I do. I think, however, from a more mature and less childish perspective, that I have a crush on the idea of a metrolink engineer and not the engineer himself. I�ll keep waving at Glen just because it�s fun. Glen pulls train 608 away and I head for the stairs to the other side of the bridge. A man shows me where the stairs are, someone else thinks I�m going to fall. I tell the person who is walking with me not to touch me. �I don�t� want you to fall,� she says. �That doesn�t mean you have to touch me.� But that�s not going to stop me from taking the stairs or waving at the engineer. �DO you need help finding the train?� someone asks me when I�m standing by it waving, kind of at an angle. �No,� I say. If I wanted to get on the train I know where the line is and how to find the cars. I�m just afraid to touch the locomotive. Why, I don�t� know but I�m sure I�ll get over that, too. Philosophy by the Tracks I head back over to the north side of the tracks and find Larry, Ken, Chris Parker, Dan Dalke, Janet, Curt (for a while) closer to the west end of the platform. We chat about all kinds of things. I don�t remember exactly how it gets started but we start talking religion. I mention I was brought up a very conservative Christian and we discuss the wearing of clothes, the usual fundamental stuff. Larry asks me if I�m a Bible Thumper. I say that I do have a very strong core of conservative beliefs but I wouldn�t really consider myself a Bible thumper. I use the bible as my source of beliefs but I don�t really think it�s allay bout what I wear or don�t wear and what I do or don�t do. We don�t get into the big philosophy discussion, I�m sure that will come later. Only humans can come up with crosses to symbolize death and if you died and then came back and saw what people did would that make you happy someone asks. People like to memorialize everything I say and somehow that leads to a discussion of Rob Sanchez. There is, in some rudimentary form or other, always a discussion of Rob Sanchez. �Sheley has a plaque in her house that she can�t place,� Larry says. This all does have to do with memorialzing things. �I have the plaque next to the picture,� I say. Someone asks me if I have a picture of RobSanchez in my house. I say yes I do It�s in my office, I say. �A gay engineer,� I say and that really defies my conservative upbringing. �That�s part of the sadness for me� I say but we don�t� discuss any of that. I imagine the group on the platform look at me with big eyes. �I�ve never argued that he wasn� doing anything wrong,� I say. �That light has been red several times out of chatswoth when I�ve been on that train,� I say. �I�d like to think that if I were sittin up ther in that cab that I wouldn�t text message. I�d like to say I wouldn�t do that! But I might do that and so I don�t say anything like that.� The four men on the platform are quiet for a moment. Shelley sees him as a human, Larry says. Remember, he died, too. Larry asks me if I�ve learned anything new about Rob Sanchez. No, I say, only that he liked to go to Las Vegas, and that he came to Chatsworth to see a man who talked ot him on the platform, but nothing significant about the accident. I still will look for a place for that plaque. And I also will keep tryig to make contact with people who knew him. I�m on pins and needles about Gary contacting me. I won�t get out to Chatsworth now for at least three weeks, maybe four. We�re starting to get busier now at work and so it may be a while before I can get out there. We discuss people who control the conversation, the fact that the lady who came to the meting might have wanted a more organized presentation instead of an informal meting. We watch freights. I wave. One engineer blows the horn maybe just for me since I gesture to please do that; maybe he just does it because there�s a group of people watching him. Engineers sometimes must feel like stars. They have much more private lives and if the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen has anything to say about it cameras won�t be in the locomotive telling us what they do up there. I�ll have to ask one what they do up there. We know what they�re not supposed to do. They can just smile and wave; it�s train etiquette. Soon the group breaks up and that�s when I find myself at the spaghetti Factory buying yet another glass. In some way the glasses are momento of the time I spend at the station. I�ll take what I can get. I�ll be back of more but not tomorrow. Tomorrow I work and then will go straight home, Wednesday I�ll probably end up at the station, and Thurs day, and Friday, too. Why not? My magazine is put together all I have to do now is find the money to print it. And hey remember what I said earlier? I had a life before trains. Now trains are my life and so I guess that finally answers the question of whether or not I am a foamer. Glen probably thinks I�m a foamer. I know this: I had fun and right now trains are an escape for me. The grieving for a Metrolink engineer is still there but right now the trains themselves are becoming a joyous thing; and there will always be the Italian soda glass to remind me of it. Good night glen. See you on the rails.
Copyright © 2009 Shelley J Alongi |