Storymania - Metrolink111:She Likes Trains by Shelley J Alongi

Metrolink111:She Likes Trains
Shelley J Alongi

Glen’s first utterance of the phrase “she likes trains” to the helpful passenger on October 19 completely embodies the last year of my life, explains it to a tee, neatly sums up all the hours I’ve spent here over the last year. It is either a fitting summation, or an elegantly crafted reciting of the obvious. When I’m not in search of the engineers, looking to learn more about the trains they run, I’m sitting on the patio talking to those who prefer to watch them, or perhaps who have gone through their meeting the train crew stage and can now claim bragging rights to the whole obsession with the rails. Me, I’m in the honeymoon stages, after grieving the death of one engineer and having my life turned upside-down by the head-on collision of two trains, I’m completely absorbed in learning about them.

I know you’ve been following this story with rapped fascination and so I won’t go into all the details here. It will give you something to read when you have the time or inclination. The simple phrase coming down from that twenty foot height over my head, gently persuading another helpful soul to go on her way embraces the whole week, the fans on the platform calling out the names of cars as they pass, almost in a form of train worship, the kids running up and down the platform pretending to be trains, the adults frantically watching out for the children who will, at a moment’s notice, stray too close to the tracks. The phrase embodies my own dangerous proximity to those shiny, glorious rails, sometimes this week, on which repair is done. Curt, a different one, Austrian Curt, says that Thursday they welded joints of one rail together. It seems I missed that in my heroic attempt to go home early and get some sleep. Remember in my last engineer writing I asked who might get to bed earlier Glen or me, both of us feeling the affects of busy days and not enough sleep? Well at this time I can’t prove it, but my money goes on Glen. I know I fell asleep in front of my computer reading some essay I had written. Yes, despite eating a grilled cheese sandwich between 5:50 and Carrie’s train, drinking a soda and eating chips between Carrie’s and Glen’s train, and injecting the mandatory ice-cream fix into my veins and probably some nuts from the snack packs, I managed to go home and fall asleep in front of the computer. “Tired today,” Glen told me from the cab. Yeah, I got you loud and clear on that one. Despite that acknowledgement, I didn’t get to bed on time.

It occurs to me this week as I help a warm-handed older man named Robert to determine when the next train will come in so that his grandson can see it, and when I sit on the patio with Norm, Dan, Bob, Janice, Curt, (known as Scooter Boy), Mike from Victorville, that for the past two months I’ve been acting like I was twenty again, or maybe fifteen, some might say. Running to meet engineers, climbing stairs, laughing over funny railroad slang terms for locomotive engineers (see the term pig mauler) in the book The Santa Fe: The Railroad that Built an Empire, going to numerous locations to gain different perspectives on passing trains, that I am in some type of second childhood. My complete collapse into a second childhood is halted by the promise of meeting with Glen the engineer to answer my questions, forcing me to assume my academic mantle and produce coherent notes so I don’t forget anything. If he neatly summarizes the entire last year of my life at the fullerton train station, it doesn’t give me the right to waste his valuable time by staring dreamily into his eyes and forgetting all my questions. I don’t want any repeat performances of the incident at the side of the locomotive where I just clammed up and could only apologize for not understanding what he said on one day, and saying “see you tomorrow”, the only words I could manage, triggered by the change in pitch of that sweet engine. I can’t approach that meeting without some sense of formality, perhaps owed to my four years of presenting speeches at Toastmasters meetings or giving presentations in front of history classes. Don’t worry I don’t plan to overwhelm him with transparencies and the like, I only want to acknowledge his willingness to sit down with me for some time out of his day and educate a starry-eyed middle-aged teenager. I don’t’ know what he expects from me but I’m sure he won’t expect what I’m planning, and I’m also sure that I will be surprised at some point about the outcome of our meeting.

Conveniently, the Southern California Train Travel group has a Christmas party on Monday December 21 at the Old Spaghetti Factory, feet away from the tracks at the station, and so I’ve put in for that day off in order to attend. If nothing happens before then perhaps we can meet on that day and then I’ll quietly slip back to Fullerton on Carrie’s train, or even his depending on the schedule, and attend, accomplishing two tasks on one day: two important train things: learning and loving.

I have put together a file with all my questions, simply with word triggers now. I add something as I discover it. It may be that I don’t ask him everything in my file but I’ll be ready. I’ll either impress him or drive him crazy. He seems to have a serious commitment to trains and his work, so I may impress him. I won’t speculate on that. I’m sure that I wont’ know till it happens what the outcome will be, but you can bet that there will be one. Right now I cant think of that meeting without getting teary-eyed and overwhelmed with gratitude. I’m sure when he’s sitting across from me I’ll be much more composed, and then, maybe not. I’ll definitely be smiling, glowing as Curt puts it. I’ll take it.

Before the meeting of the minds occurs, there are things to write about and Sunday November 8 is one of those quiet, pleasant evenings where everyone who has a life during the week comes to watch train number 4, Amtrak’s Southwest Chief come in at approximately 7:15. Tonight, Norm, Dan, Janice, Bob, Curt, Mike from Victorville, all gather on the patio talking about trucks, which is better, a big or a small one? Doug joins the group, he has arrived earlier, teasing me about laughing so hard I’m crying over the term “pig mauler” something I can’t quite bring myself to associate with Glen as a locomotive engineer. I can’t imagine standing down there telling him I learned this new phrase. I’d be laughing so hard I’d waste my precious two minutes and have to wait another 24 hours to see him again.

“Hogger,’ says Norm, is a term for a locomotive engineer. He says it with a straight face, but I just can’t imagine it. I’ll have to learn the reason why this is such a term, it may hearken back to the days of steam when these engines were hard to run, and demanded physical labor in some cases. I’m sure it’s all part of my learning process, but today, Sunday, I’m in absolute hilarity over such a phrase. I just can’t imagine Glen sitting there, looking at his screen, confidently pushing all those buttons, as a pig mauler. I think I’ll just leave that one alone for now. It puts me in stitches. Whenever I need a good laugh I think of it. It does the trick every time.

Simon who works the train as a sleeping car attendant joins us, ready to hop back on it and return to work. Before he leaves us for his run to Chicago and back, he tells Curt and anyone listening that parked trains shine blue lights so that people can see them long distances. Perhaps this is where Kay mart got the idea years ago about the blue light special. Who knows. You can see it for miles, that’s what the railroad wants, maybe that’s what Kay mart wants. And where do you get those lights, Curt wants to know? A decision is reached. It’s either Fourth or Eleventh Street in Los Angeles, or anywhere between those two points. Who knows.

As is the usual custom, people depart after the train leaves for its familiar destinations. Doug goes home to watch a special on the weather channel on tornadoes. Mike and I sit on the planter, the place that has become my creative catalyst corner, not far from the bench where I sat when I first encountered the freight engineer waving back in a cool night in February. ON this very pleasant cool evening, Curt the Scooter Boy appears, discussing episodes of “The Twilight Zone”, and the movie “What About bob.” People wait for trains, the pathway quiets as children disappear off to bed or to catch their trains. We discuss why Metrolink is wanting to hire Amtrak to hire crews. I wonder which company hired Glen? I don’t ask that on the planter, the question just pops into my head once in a while. They sure got a good catch. It has to be more than Chatsworth that inspires a move to Amtrak, but Mike doesn’t know the answer. It isn’t till a day later when I sit at the east end of the platform talking to Dave Norris, the man who writes down the names of the trains and cars that come through the station that I get a bit of an answer. According to him, Connex, the railroad that hired Rob Sanchez and metrolink crews did some falsifying of records. They documented tests that were not conducted, apparently. This is his version and I may be true, but tonight Sunday, the time passes peacefully and these things are only touched upon.

It’s amazing the variety of people that enjoy trains. Some really know what’s going on, some like me are learning, a nod then others don’t know what’s going on, they just want to watch trains. I’ve discovered on my own journey to railfanhood that each person has something that drives them to this avocation. I always like to hear each prson’s story. Maybe I’ll ask Glen his story if there’s sufficient time. In our dealings with each other, whether brief or prolonged, I’m sure I’ll get a chance to ask him the question. Will the engineer’s answer be different from the person on the patio who only watches the trains? What will Carrie say. Does he like trains? Dave Noris says his grandfather worked for the railroad but never liked to talk about it. Some of the guys say you can tell who likes the job and who just does the job when they come through the station. The freight engineers seem to like their jobs the most. Maybe no one really talks to the Metrolink engineers and asks them. Everyone is too busy catching the train to ask anything of the engineers. The stops are so brief, and yet one can learn so much in those two minutes. Just ask me, I know. And what do I really know about any of my engineers? I know Glen loves trains. Glen knows I like trains. This is a happy thing to know.

Since I am here, I think, and there is one more train to Ocean Side that will arrive at the platform, I decide, after much procrastination, to go see if I can make contact with its engineer. Curt finds me and decides to join me. Since he is such a social guy, meeting engineers might be up his alley. It gives him a chance to see what the engineers look like and describe them to me. The 9:15 train appears, short of its mark, cars hanging off the platform. The engineer, stocky, a weight lifter to Curt’s investigation, opens his door, looks around and closes his door. The man, Curt guesses, is about thirty-two and interested in meeting up with his girlfriend after his run is completed. I do not know. I only know that of the engineers I’ve talked to on metrolink runs or Amtrak runs, he is the most unresponsive. Curt wonders if this might be his first week on the job with his attention to the platform. But we don’t know. All these, of course, are first impressions. Time may tell a different story. It does make one wonder though, does he like trains? Alfa cat Glen, you’re still the best.

The Sunday trip ends on that note. I find a cab and return home to start my train thing all over again. As I exit the station, walk off into the sunset of one week and into the dawn of another, I can still hear those words coming down from the cab of Metrolink 608: “She likes trains.”