Metrolink111: Touching The Locomotive This week it’s all about Glen and touching the locomotive. I doubt that waving at a railroad engineer has ever become such a dramatic event. I suppose a “WELCOME GLEN sign might top it, but tonight, Tuesday October 14, a year after I’ve made my first trip to the train station, there’s some kind of something that makes Larry, Curt, and Janice come over to track 3 and get a look at my adopted engineer. The cool fall evening makes me wear a light blue fleece jacket and carry an umbrella in my bright yellow railroad bag, though rain isn’t due till later on tonight. At 6:40 I make my way as usual over to track 3, preferring, especially since I’ve finally found a way to locate them, to take the stairs over instead of the elevator, one, because the elevator is slow and, two, because I use it as an excuse to get my workout. By the time I’ve traversed the four flights up and taken the three flights down I’m winded, though because of the increasing frequency of taking them, I am becoming less so. On the journey over the bridge, a child eagerly awaits the arrival of Metrolink train number unspecified by this writer to Riverside or is it to Los Angeles? It must be Los Angeles since it’s on track 1 and tonight bob informs me that the train to Riverside comes on track 3. I was wrong about the riverside train coming on track 1. I will buy that. In any case, now the child awaits, the train arrives, helping me place the location of the tracks even if for now track 3 remains empty. Soon it won’t be. Metrolink train 608, Glen’s train is due to arrive here in about fifteen minutes. If I’m correct and judging timing right he should be pulling into the Buena Park station about now, the one that took me by surprise a month ago when I took my first metrolink Orange County line trip in over two years, September 11 after taking Metrolink 111 and 118 to and from Chatsworth. Tonight I stand waiting, anticipating Glen’s arrival as much as the fact that Janice is coming over to help get a better description of him, whether for me or for her own curious nature I don’t know. It is at this time that I learn that Larry is coming, too, and soon Curt shows up on his scooter, on the other side of the tracks, too lazy he says to take the elevator. Janice who has now come to this side says he’s lazy. He is lazy. Curt knows how to get over on this side of the track. If he wants to avoid the elevator he’ll have to go all the way down to the end of the platform and cross where there’s no fence and hey by the time he does that the train will be out of here! It’s a matter of getting the elevator in time now since it tends to fill up and take forever. Most people who are taking metrolink 608 are already on this side. The clock in the clock tower strikes 7:00. You would think that Glen had celebrity status, and even some who write about the death of Rob Sanchez and his teenage following suggest that engineers can obtain such status in the eyes of railfans. Perhaps, tonight, Glen reaches that status since there is a small following here, mostly because of me, I think. Everyone knows I’m wanting to at least be acknowledged by an engineer, and I don’t really think that’s a problem. Curiosity takes the cake today because after a year of striving to be part of the group, I think tonight proves that I have achieved it. “There’s a green light on track 2,” Janice, bob’s wife, tells me. That means there’s going to be a freight train coming since no passenger train uses track 2. there’s also a green light on track 3. What signals each engineer sees is unclear to me though they are green here, she says. I’m not going to speculate on that because from this place I don’t know where each train is sitting. It could be that the freight is sitting because the Metrolink 608 now pulls in slowly as usual, bell clanging. I stand on the side of it, waving. “He saw you,” says Janice. “This way.” She comes over to me and takes my right hand. “Walk up,” she says, we approach that live, breathing restless locomotive. “He’s looking down.” We’re not standing so far away but caution always makes me stand a little further back than I need to, though I chalk it up to respect for the power of the train that makes me stay so far back. It seems like that fifteen foot journey takes forever and now I’m standing right at it, my hand on the side, high up, not quite on the glass. “Now you’re even with him,” she says. “He’s waving.” How can Glen not wave? Two people just came up to the side of his private sanctuary? Can he possibly ignore them? I suppose he can, though, tonight he chooses not to. I don’t thin he ignores me before this, but tonight is the closest I’ve actually been to the side of the train when I’m not getting on it. Somehow it’s funny I don’t have so much hesitancy when it comes to getting on the train. I can go right up to the car and find the opening but here? This is a different place. Perhaps it’s a matter of whether I feel I’m invited to approach rather than just being hesitant about it; and then again I do respect the power of a train. There is sufficient warning that the train will be moving so there’s no problem knowing when it will do that, and now that I’ve been standing here for three weeks when I get the chance I know the sounds of the engine at ease or at attention. None of that enters my mind now as I stand there. “He’s looking down,” she says. “Wave.” I do. And smile, too, I’m sure. Standing further back earlier, I say his name, though from this vantage point it’s lip reading. The bell clangs. He waves again, I wave back, and tonight’s two minute encounter with an engineer whose name I know has ended. “You guys are glint to scare him,” I tell everyone. “Tap the glass,” says Larry earlier. “No.” Still no words from the engineer, but I don’t really need them. If he talks it takes the mystery away and being human I suppose there really is no mystery. He’s tall and big or skinny, he feels pain, eats, sleeps, experiences normal body functions just like any of us. He puts his pants on, as Jack London is reported to have said and maybe got it from someone else, one leg at a time. He can, as Daylight burning said, only sleep in one bed at a time. He laughs, cries, loves, loses, has troubles, probably gets a kick out of something I could never imagine, or maybe I can imagine it. He is like all of us part of the same human race confined by the same laws of gravity, moved by the same things, and somehow in spite of that, is unique in the way that only each human can be. Probably as I’m writing this he’s preparing for his day, or if he’s lucky, maybe he has a day off. I will be preparing for my day shortly since it is now 4:51 AM according to the computer clock. But for me, standing here, being the suppliant, there is some mystery involved in actually adopting an engineer that makes more than one appearance a day over here. Looking back at my essay I remember that when I first sat at the station my questions were about engineers, and not trains. What were their stories? Names? Likes and dislikes? You can read more about this in my essay called “The Green Light of Passion.” I suppose the train thing is about the people who run them. One man told me that some train crews are nice and some are not, just like any other profession. Tonight, finally waving, I finally know at least one thing about an engineer: his name. It’s the same one that comes every night. He wears eye glasses, not sunglasses, and he has a moustache. That’s all we know. And the best part in the analysis and the waiting and the wondering is that he sees me. Some of my friends would say how could he not see me? I do have a tendency to make a name for myself wherever I go. I’m not quite sure how I do that, and most of the time it’s not intentional, but it happens. “Glen is like my cat Brandy,” I say to someone. “He hides from people.” He’s friendly like my cat just not so interactive like the other engineer I haven’t told you about yet. But first things first. Janice points out that he stops the train right across from the second palm tree. When you take the stairs down there is a light, then parallel to the track is one palm tree, then a second one. If I use that palm tree as the location point I can find him. He usually stops at the same place each time. Maybe next time I won’t be so hesitant about going right up to the side of that train. I usually use the bell as a location point since his window is directly above it, the bell is mounted under the frame it seems, according to what some of the other travel members have told me. His window may be in some cases located just to the left of it, the bell being at the front. I am fascinated by bells and these bells I know are operated by switches and not by ropes as were the ones in the days of steam. You may be able to find one here or there, but this one is operated by a cool hand on a cool switch. There are two different Metrolink engines that come through the station and this week Glen operates both types. I need to ask some questions about design, but the main difference for me so far is the bell. Tonight he has the older, softer bell, the night before, Monday, he has the locomotive with the strident tone. It is a softer welcome, the newer one demands attention, asking in so many words for someone to please notice because I’m big and you’re not, so please get out of the way. Standing at the side of that breathing, restless locomotive, cuddling as it were, I’m more than happy to oblige the more than obliging engineer, or is it the bell. You decide. Wednesday is my final trip to the station for the week and this week it’s been entirely about glen. I get there at 5:00 after getting off from work early, taking care of some personal business and then heading home to drop off my groceries. I am not sure if I want to go or not but then decide that I would be disappointed if I don’t go. Glen won’t especially miss me but I’d miss the two minute interaction, and I’d miss just being with the trains and the people, and experiencing the still cool fall weather. I don’t stay long. I get to the station and enjoy an ice-cream sandwich by the tracks, half of a diet Pepsi and then go and find Bob and Janice. “Does he have hair?” I ask in reference to her assessment of Glen’s physical appearance. “He has hair,” she says. We saw a baldheaded guy we thought might be him but last night showed us that this is not a characteristic associated with him. I did learn his last name tonight by the way but for sake of privacy I won’t divulge it. He doesn’t know I’m writing about him. I will tell you, however, that he makes an early appearance in Fullerton in the morning and does not appear again till the 7:04 scheduled time when I encounter him. I learn this information from the man who goes to the different stations maintaining the equipment for the railroad, the machine, the call boxes. We tell him that I like to greet his train when it arrives. Later he says after I went over to greet him, “I saw you sweet talking him.” “No,” I laugh. “He didn’t say anything. But I’m sure he saw me and waved. The time comes to make my way to the bridge. I hoist my bright yellow railroad bag to my shoulder and make my way to the stairs. Somehow tonight I don’t find them as easily as I did the night before. However, I make my way across and have some trouble counting the palm trees, still not sure of their proximity to each other, but not something that can’t be fixed in another exploration or two. Tonight is the last night here for me till Monday. I will work my full shifts tomorrow and Friday. I find the spot, Janice across the tracks tells me to walk more to the right. When the bell clangs (it is the newer more strident one), I follow it to the point where it becomes stationary. I haven’t missed the mark by much. Tonight things are different. I am right up on the safety line and using the bell as the locator I put my hand on the side of the locomotive, right on his door. “I saw you rapping on his door,” Curt says later, reaffirming my correct assessment of Glen’s proximity to me. I can’t be sure he saw me, but based on precedent I’d say that unless he was seriously distracted by something, he saw me. I’m going to believe he saw me. The thing that is different is that tonight I have touched the locomotive. I have done what I was afraid to do. I have, without any help, located it, touched it, waved, and I’m sure been noticed. He still doesn’t talk to me. It’s really ok. I stand and smile, I don’t say anything tonight, I just stand there, engrossed in my private moment with the engineer. This is my happy place. The bell clangs signaling the end of our silent acknowledgment of each other’s presence on the planet. Two minutes in one day, two people who don’t know each other, meet, smile, wave, and go on to separate existences. Will he ever talk to me? I don’t know. What I do know is that tonight I have touched the locomotive. I have made contact again and oh the best part? No one has asked me if I am looking for the train. Looking up into the window of that cab, imagining him sitting there, I have found the part of the train I’m looking for; and not only that but I have touched the locomotive.
Copyright © 2009 Shelley J Alongi |