Storymania - Metrolink708: Engineer Hunter by Shelley J Alongi

Metrolink708: Engineer Hunter
Shelley J Alongi

If there is a theme to the last four weeks since my railroad birthday, it is this: the mild, unseasonable cool summer watches as the platform girlfriend interacts with the patio faithful, the foamers, the homeless guys just hanging out, talking to an occasional person waiting for a late train, and engineer hunting. Maybe, says more than one person, there is an engineer in Shelley’s future. Nineteen years ago, waiting for that train in Los Angeles, I had no idea that there were trains in my future. I barely remembered that there were trains in my past. Santa Fe has retired a bunch of locomotives, all diesel, they keep telling me now. It has been several generations since my great grandfather ran steam engines for the Santa Fe. The first generation or two of locomotives has gone out of service. And his great grand daughter now stands on the platform with those who know much more, talk about the good old days as if they were yesterday, take pictures, and just try to make it through Tuesday. I guess I’m one of them now, the foamers, the train-ravaged, and yes, the engineer girl, the engineer hunter.

Engineer Hunter

“I didn’t see you at the other end down by the café.”

Dave Norris addresses his comment to me as we all stand or sit by the railroad tracks on the station platform. It is a cool August night, Tuesday the 9th. I’m not sure how to describe the summer weather we’ve been having here except to say that the only other time I remember the weather being so mild was about fifteen years ago when I took a trip by train it turns out across country. Returning to the fullerton station I was met by curly, Dan Dalke’s brother, who took me to dinner and then told me that the summer of that year, 1993 was the mildest on record. The summer of 1993 was memorable because I flew to Chicago, drove with a missionary team from Chicago to Dallas, flew to Clovis New Mexico, stayed a week with my great aunt, flew back to Dallas, and caught the train to Los Angeles. Sitting at Union Station, age 25 years, waiting for yet another train to Eugene, Oregon, I had know inkling there were trains in my future. Now I stand here, on another cool summer night taking a break between buses, waiting for my alarm to let me know it’s time to catch the bus home. This week and next week I work late shifts which means I will not get down to the station to do engineer hunting, as Dave calls it. I called it my engineer social life but he calls it engineer hunting. Whatever it is, this break gives me a chance to update you on all that has been happening. So hold on tight!

The engineer and the Switch Key

Sunday August 1 is the railroad show at Local 324 the United Food Workers Union Hall on Stanton Avenue in Buena Park. . I have gone against all financial wisdom and have gone to Buena Park to purchase what turns out to be not one, not two, but three switch keys and a lock. “I got a UP key, an SF key, and an SP key and the UP key has a lock” I text to Glen later. The first time I got a key, the one I proudly showed glen way back in January, he asked me where the lock was. Now, I hold in my hand a brass lock used on the UP railroad, one that, Norm later on, says might be worth something. No, Dave Norris contradicts when I tell him later, some might be worth something but this one not so much. It doesn’t matter. The engineer thinks it’s worth something. The engineer, now almost on his way back to work after an extended medical leave, tells me he’ll give mea $1.00 for my lock. No, I insist, no not even for an engineer will I sell a lock for one dollar, especially when it cost me $85.00 for the lock and the key. Norm sees the switch keys hanging on my lanyard.

“Let me see those,” he says.

Well, so now the engineer wants to see my switch keys? No, not just one switch key, but four now. I take the ring off the lanyard that holds the keys and two brass bells and reach across the wrought iron table on this balmy summer evening and relinquish my switch keys to the engineer. He looks.

“Oh this one looks like mine,” he says. “They charge $1.25 if we lose our keys,” he says. He is talking about the BNSF key that each engineer and crewmember is issued when hiring on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad. He hands them back.

He is in an expansive mood tonight, talking about how locomotives don’t offer much protection to the engineers. The bottoms are made of steel he explains, but the cab is very vulnerable, perhaps insulated from noise to some degree.

“I want to know,” I say, “what happened to the freight engineer at Chatsworth. He was injured. They clammed that one up very quickly.”

I’m sure he got paid very well,” someone says.

Norm wants to know, at some point, which company hired train crews for Metrolink before Amtrak took over that task n July.

“Connex,” I say. “A lot has changed,’ he says, something I may have explained earlier, “especially the use of cell phones since the Chatsworth accident. Conductors and engineers aren’t always friends, he says. He talks about hitting a truck. It hurts if you hit something, he says, and I don’t think he means emotionally. This is the most he has talked about his job since I’ve known him. It took me a year to talk to him, now he Danes to share his experiences without encouragement. Maybe he is bored. He is worried, he says, about a test he has to pass. He has to walk a mile in twelve minutes. No, Dan says, it is the rate of one mile in twelve minutes, but I think Norm is still worried. I text him on Monday, he says the test was fine. But Sunday night he is worried. Norm, the one most interested in my switch keys, just wants to go back to work. Glen, his brother, though they aren’t in the same union, would be proud. The United Transportation Union, Norm says, fights whatever the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen supports and visa versa. Two unions, one job, so many railroads, so many engineers, and four switch keys. So you really can show the engineer your switch key.

“When Glen left this line,” I tell bobby on Monday, “they asked me if I showed the new engineer my switch key. show him the switch key?” I gasp in astonishment. “How rude!”

bobby laughs.

“Hey the engineer wanted to see my switch key,” I tell the patio faithful on Sunday night. That engineer doesn’t respond, but Bobby finds me amusing. So many engineers, just like Shelley’s cats.

“I would have sold you mine, bobby says about his switch keys, something I’ve already reported.

“How much?” I ask. “Which railroads do you have switch keys for?”

“All of them,” he says. All of them? Wow that would be an awful big number, sir. Wonder if Glen has any switch keys. What does he collect? Platform girlfriends, maybe.

“It’s one of your platform girl friends,” Dave Norris teased when I said once Glen’s wife might oppose a call from me. I guess I’m the engineer’s platform girl friend. I’m the engineer hunter. I’m on the trail of gold, digging out information from the men and women who operate the commuter trains to paradise. The women haven’t interacted with me, it has been mostly about the men. But I have to get the right one. You know who the right one is. I hope his wife tells him everyday he’s the best. If not, you’ll step in, someone teases me. You bet. Glen is the best. Meow. Here kitty kitty! He is an old head, as the term goes. He has operated all those engines, and all my other engineers, younger and sometimes having different opinions about the newer ones, are encouraged to reverently and respectfully line up right behind him. Take a number, you’ll get there eventually. “You get there eventually,” Glen says, just trying to make it through Tuesday. So far, we always do.

Nightly Routine

There is a rhythm to the fullerton train station this cool, almost spring-like summer. Give the station a year, Curt says, and things will be different. For here and for now, they are comforting in their sameness and yet there is always a splash of excitement to liven things up.

Andy the Metrolink agent, has a son now; Neil Emory, a baby boy born in July. Rene, one of the new agents, doesn’t know any of the engineers here. She has concentrated most of her work in the Inland Empire. Another one of the agents will be transferred to the office, Janice says. Apparently there is no agent who will tease me about engineers. No, I don’t’ have Andy’s phone number. “I’m not Glen,” he says once. No he’s not, but he’s a pretty good guy even if he does sometimes get trains mixed up. We don’ see the new agents around here much. I guess Brian was here last week when I wasn’t. Andy is working the San Clemente section of Metrolink territory. He is not here to see the engineer hunt. He has a baby now; he has bigger and better things to do.

I arrive one night to find an ambulance at the front of the station. When I let curt know this, he immediately makes haste to investigate. The woman resting on a bench who, a taxi driver, feels, needs assistance. He calls the ambulance and the paramedics take her, according to Curt, by protest. Rick, says one of the taxi drivers, apparently one who is always high strung or anxious, should not call 911 unless I tell him. The homeless guys sitting and drinking forty ounces, disappearing when the police come to clear the station of its characters. They haven’t bothered me. I guess I look harmless. Bruce waits for the train, keeps tabs on all of them. Janice and bob sit and observe, making commentary on al things train and people oriented. Everyone watches everyone else. The man dressed in a suit and a tie with the five kids who is on disability pan handles.

“How are your five kids?” I want to know.

“They’re doing great, ma'm. Do you have a dollar?”

What would a man with five kids do with a single dollar. Everyone knows he’s pan handling.
Simon’s wife doesn’t give him any money. He goes inside the café and exchanges his six one dollar bills for quarters. Daisy, the new girl, brings her husband Abraham to help. He sweeps the patio. I buy an occasional Diet Doctor Pepper now. I even spring for a cheese burger, some times. It isn’t a double cheese burger, but it is a cheese burger and it is good. I even buy an occasional ice-cream here. My financial situation since losing my social security disability check has become such that I must do what many Americans do these days: live from hand to mouth. I do have to say, however, that I do at the end of each pay period have at least $10.00 to my name which is more than I ever had when I got social security income. So even if I think I’m broke, I’m not broke. I have creditors who want my money, but I’m not broke. I just can’t pay $3.50 for an ice-cream cone very often and right now, I don’t. I buy my own ice-cream. I enjoy my trips to the station. They are not extravagant, but they are entertaining. And on occasion I tear up, missing Glen. But mostly I enjoy sitting on my wall in the cool summer night breeze observing the conversations around me. I pull food to of my bag, sometimes cereal in a mug, a bottle of milk, grapes, raisins, egg salad sandwiches Dave is always keenly interested in what I’m eating. He thinks it’s creative of me to eat cereal then chase it with milk. One night it is water since I was too lazy to poor milk into a cup with a lid. One day he thinks an egg salad sandwich is a cheese samich.

Robert the attorney admits defeat. He admits getting a good feeling from one judge. I may need Robert’s services. I think I can work with one who admits that he doesn’t always win cases. He never shares inappropriate information, not like glen’s friend. One night when I arrive everyone is discussing electricity, electrocution, people they’ve known who have been electrocuted, experiences they’ve had with hot wires, but not trains. A railfan, Chris of train web is writing a book. “But his writing is so boring,” I eject into the quiet night as we all stare lovingly down the steel railroad tracks, looking for freights, locomotives, engineers. Peter, Bruce’s sidekick, and Chris despise each other, I am told. Freights slowly pull up to the signals and wait. Once in a while I go and try to engage the freight engineers. I must look like a railfan with a cane and no camera. Maybe I look lost. Maybe I look like I’m in love. Maybe I just look like a foamer. NO freight engineers talk to me. I am sure one or two of them wave before they ring their sweet bells and pull their tons of economy sustaining gadgets off into the Barstow sunset. One night I go down to the east end of the platform and the small group, not Dave Norris, completely ignores me. It’s fine.

On one Friday night, Elena is there with her son Danny. I give her a Pampered Chef catalog. We talk bout food. One day, Tim, one of the railfans, sets my cell phone alarm for me. On a Saturday, late, and because I have cabin fever and make a rare weekend trip to the station, Chris gives me a idea home. We talk about the death of Dan Dale. Yes, Dan Dalke, the avid train fan, the man who stood by the tracks with me back in December while we all talked about Rob Sanchez, has died of lung cancer. The man who says “I’m doing great” when we finally get to talk to him in December while he is at UCI, is gone. This means his entire immediate family is gone, his mother and father, Curly, and now Dan. The fullerton train station has lost a regular, a friend, a foamer has gone on to his reward. At this writing, his memorial service is scheduled for Monday August 16. today is Tuesday August 10. It is interesting that both brothers die in July, perhaps a week or two apart. It’s odd to think that we pass the date of our death each year, not knowing what day it will be till it arrives. Dan’s death leaves a hole in the community.

“I keep expecting him to come up here quietly and say, oh, pizza,” Chris Parker says as we all stand around three boxes of pizza. The foamer group celebrates Danny’s birthday. There is Brett, the leader, the maintainer of traffic signals who regales us with stories of miscommunications between cities, who fixes what signal and when and why or why it doesn’t happen. Just hope all your signals are working.

I offer to help pay for the pizza, but it is all covered, they say. It is good. Danny is fourteen years old, now. And Dan Dale is not here to celebrate with us. But he liked pizza, they say. Everyone remembers Dan. He was one of them.

One night I make my way back toward the west end, just past the café. Soon it will be time to walk behind the brick perching spots, walk past the baggage cart, the wrought iron railing that parallels the building, past the benches and out to the parking area where the taxis sit. I will make my way across the coble stones keeping freight traffic on my left, an island with bushes on my right, watch for cars and buses, and make my way to dock 4 to catch the 26 down Commonwealth. Mike is a great driver. He seems to know where I’m getting off, sometimes remembering when I forget. Before that happens, I sit on the planter with Wally who has just returned from vacation. I play with two pen lights I have gotten from Disney today. One is a key ring and one is a pen. They both look like light savers from Star Wars. I take the ring off on of them and use it for a bell holder. Curt comes up. I give him the lights. He is fascinated by those things. Curt who has moved out of one house and into another, plays with the lights and shows the taxi drivers his new found treasure. I am glad I can provide such amusement. I have paid him back for all his engineer skill; he has helped the engineer hunter spring on her prey.

The nights pass; people come and go. Trains are late and on time. And if there is a theme to the last four weeks since my railroad birthday, it is this: the mild, unseasonable cool summer watches as the platform girlfriend interacts with the patio faithful, the foamers, the homeless guys just hanging out, talking to an occasional person waiting for a late train, and engineer hunting. Maybe, says more than one person, there is an engineer in Shelley’s future. Nineteen years ago, waiting for that train in Los Angeles, I had no idea that there were trains in my future. I barely remembered that there were trains in my past. Santa Fe has retired a bunch of locomotives, all diesel, they keep telling me now. It has been several generations since my great grandfather ran steam engines for the Santa Fe. The first generation or two of locomotives has gone out of service. And his great grand daughter now stands on the platform with those who know much more, talk about the good old days as if they were yesterday, take pictures, and just try to make it through Tuesday. I guess I’m one of them now, the foamers, the train-ravaged, and yes, the engineer girl, the engineer hunter.