Storymania - She Likes Trains: Between Engineers by Shelley J Alongi

She Likes Trains: Between Engineers
Shelley J Alongi

“have a good one,” says Larry, I respond, telling my company goodbye. I head off to my bus and to the doughnut shop to indulge in sweets while I wait for my second bus home. Tonight it is my love, my romance, my enjoyment, therapy for the work day, time outdoors, here I am between engineers, and loving every minute of it. Happy Easter to you and all yours all my engineers.

“I was noticing the lack of brass around your neck.”

Dave Noris stands in the door trackside at the Santa Fe café observing the little group gathered around the second table just in front of the back wall of refrigerators holding Snapple, beer and wine, soda, and an assortment of food items including but not limited to sandwiches, apples, ad eggs. Bob, Janice, and the middle-aged adolescent railfan, that would be me, congregate tonight, Monday April 18, the week before Easter. Music blends somewhere in the background, people wait for Amtrak’s Pacific Surf liner. I am between engineers, as usual, though I suppose that’s better than being between jobs, something that by the end of the week I wonder about.

My 606 has left, Cary asks me how my arm is doing, and my 608 awaits.

“What’s the word?” Cary yells over his MPI.

“It’s all good!”

Where is his friend? He doesn’t know, he says. But here I am after a week and here he is, off again, showing up, doing his job, and remembering to ask me how my arm is doing eight weeks after the accident that sprained it. It’s doing a lot better, I tell him, I can almost move it, I still have to help it wave him off into the distance, off to Ocean Side.

“Doctors orders?” Dave continues his probe into the reason for my decreased hardware, eliciting a chuckle from Dan. When I said I was nervous as a cat when reestablishing contact with engineers he thought that was amusing. He’s also the one who suggested I was looking for a job in Riverside in order to meet Glenn. Ah funny! Dan has recently picked his wife up from the airport, not the train station, when she returned from a vacation to Seattle. I don’t always see Dan, his wife is a librarian, it turns out, Curt has seen her at the Fullerton public library, but with my schedule these days impacted by work and transcripts and choir rehearsal and injury I haven’t seen him much. He’s still there and he’s still chuckling. Usually it’s at something in regard to me.

“She’ll have a bowed neck,” he says in reference to the brass business. I don’t think he knows about my shoulder injury. But then maybe he does, because news travels like wild fire at the train station.

“Oh I’m glad you said something!”

I reach into my red back pack sitting upright on the floor, yes I’ve gone back to carrying that now, both shoulders will support it though the right one is still been slow about getting back in shape.
“don’t don them because of me,” Dave now says as I search through the assortment of things I think I need in a day’s work. Three compartments, one holding a food bag, one holding what I call my BIMPK bag, and the other holding the bag with things that easily get lost round out the bag that equates to the car owner’s trunk. The BIMPK bag is a simple thing holding the items I feel I need to take everywhere: bus pass, i.d., money, phone, an keys. In the Anaheim Inn bag with a Velcro latch, a bag I got from my room mate who doesn’t use bags as extensively as I do, holds what every woman needs: Advil, a flash light, a can opener, a headset, a tooth brush, no tooth paste, a towel, and a pill box. Guess I am prepared in case one of my engineers snatches me away some day. I always remember this Dolly Parton song about a tooth brush in her purse and a $20 in her pocket. I don’t think that will happen but I have a towel in that bag just in case someone has to pick me up with a mop and a bucket when one of them leaves me crushed on the platform because the railroad shuffle takes one of them away from me. A little dramatic I suppose but an interesting prospect.

Tonight no one is taking any of my engineers away from me. Time passes as we wait for 608, Amtrak 785 is on time, Metrolink 707 shows up on track one, heading to Riverside. This is the engineer I haven’t met yet. It’s like meeting 708, a train I don’t make because I’m focused on 608, but someday I am going to gird my courage, take my brass hardware, all my switch keys, silver and brass bells, and my two railroad logos Southern Pacific and Santa Fe and go down to the place where I used to meet Glenn in the morning. This is where I go when I get here before 5:00 pm, which doesn’t happen very often these days. Tonight I’m not thinking of meeting 707, I am waiting for 608. My bespectacled engineer with his two little girls has been on vacation, so Chad has told me last week, when I stand waiting for the same train. Since I haven’t made it back till tonight, we will see where Bobby has been and we’ll learn how his vacation went. Chad has been very kind about letting me know what he did with my stock broker engineer but we’ll have to find out from bobby just how things have been.

Right now we all gather in the café waiting for number 4. When 4 is announced I make my way over to track 3. No one asks me if I need the train. No one rushes to help me as I make my way past the elevator, which isn’t working according to the updates from Metrolink, and find the six car marker. The bell sounds on the Genesis locomotive as number 4 pulls to its usual stopping point. After a few moments the bell of 608 sounds, the strident tone of the bell I do not like. Bobby’s locomotive is noisy tonight, squeaking badly. It has been here before, and I think Glenn has operated it at lease once here, I remember the squeak and groan of this locomotive.

“Down here,” Bobby says, I have missed my mark and he coaches me down toward him. It’s not too far that I have to go but I do walk up to his window.

“Where have you been?” he asks over his clattering MPI.

“working!” I yell up into that window. “You were on vacation,” I say now. “How was it?”

“Nice,” says the engineer with a hint of enjoyment in his voice. He says his locomotive is number 895. The conversation is short, he gets the highball and then he is gone to his week, and I go off to mine. It will be the last time I see my engineers this week, but I think of them and wish them a happy Easter. “Happy Easter to all yours from me and the kitties,” I text to Glenn. “I’ll leave you in peace the next few weeks are going to be crazy,” I tell my number one engineer on Saturday while I am taking a break from working on transcripts. It is true. I work all day most days and then the next three Saturdays are full of Easter choir rehearsal, social engagements, trips to the Orange empire Railroad Museum twice, a meeting and whatever else comes up. Perhaps in three weeks I can try again. A man with three grown children and a wife, a grandchild, a kids racing team, or just a wish not to talk trains, is very busy and I wouldn’t want it any other way. Conversations with him are always worth the wait. They are gold.

Larry, not the oil executive, asked me if I was a gold digger when I wanted to meet an engineer. Digging? No, I don’t have to dig. I’ll take the gold when I can get it. And in the mean time there are so many other engineers to talk to, they are all gold, and between all of them I will be the happiest star struck love sick railfan in the world.

There is no response either time from Glenn, but no matter, he’s my number one engineer with his own life and it should be that way. All my engineers go off to their weeks and I’ll see them again, soon, after the busy weekend I will see them. I have a few early shifts next week. My focus will be on improving my numbers, working on things we need to include in our calls, but in the back of my mind will be conversations with all my engineers. Hope all of them have a happy Easter. Rest well my engineers.

I wave my stock broker engineer operating my 608 off to the Orange subdivision and turn to make my way to the bridge.

“Was that the train to ocean Side?” Four frantic Asians and a couple of Americans stand looking desperately at me.

“Yes.”

“Why did it leave?”

“Because,” I smile only a little. “It was time to leave.”

I make my way up the stairs, followed by the party who has just missed bobby’s train.

“You’ll have to take the Amtrak in about two hours,” I say. A lady catches up to me on the stairs.

“We stood there watching you guys talk and missed the train. You were talking to the engineer?”

“yes.” That would be me who was afraid to contact them a year and a half ago and now they watch me interact with my engineers and miss their train. “A nice guy with a couple of kids probably on his second marriage.”

“That’s so normal,” she says and then they go off to find their way to another train.

Now I make my way down to the east end of the platform.

“Apparently I am distracting,” I tell Dave Noris and Larry the oil executive.

“why?” Dave asks as I take my perch on the wall, snuggly fitting into my spot against the rails and placing my bag next to me.

“Because these guys watched me talk to the engineer and missed their train!”

Oops, a general sigh escapes the group. Guess they’ll have to find another one. You Shouldn’t be standing and watching the Fullerton engineer girl if you want to be on the train. You should be, well, getting on the train.

The nice, comfortable balmy evening invites us to watch for freights, talk about why and when holding tanks were installed on Amtrak trains. A man standing under a trestle in Florida back in the 1970s was sprayed by the waste from an Amtrak train, implementing the use of the holding tank now that we have grown used to. The balmy sweet weather tonight witnesses the three train watchers, the middle aged adolescent railfan and the two gentlemen of the rails as they scan the tracks for freights an love, wishing engineers the best. A freight approaches on track 2, a westbound, not ringing his bell.

“Are you hungry Mr. Engineer?” I pull out my red food bag, one that I have gotten as a gift from the Disney marketing team. It is a small thing but it does hold a good amount of food, in this case, oranges and pizza, and I enjoy them here on my wall. Curt pulls up on his bike, the tires scraping against the cobble stone pathway. I pull out a zip lock bag with three pizza slices.

“Lunch!’ I tell Curt giving him the bag. “Enjoy it.”

I am tired of the pizza but I am a good girl. I do the pizza thing for about two or three days, and it is good. It is good to have food in my bag again and good to enjoy it on the train station platform, watching the Amtrak and freight traffic. Here I am between engineers, waiting for another meeting with 606, texting my Lancaster baby, my railroad crush who doesn’t respond but doesn’t tell me to go away. My heart wishes him the best, he is the best, and all my others are cheerful and happy to coach me to them, ask me how I’m doing, all in a two minute romance with the rails that may or may not have connections with the steam era back at the middle of the twentieth century, the great grand daughter of a railroad engineer now sits here between engineers, learning, imagining, wanting to know the stories of all of them, however I can get them. In one week I go to a museum to ride in a locomotive and maybe find an engineer or two to interview.

In the meantime, we discuss the fact that Santa fe and Union Pacific didn’t have anything as large as the two little metallic circles I hold on my lanyard with their logos. They all represent the hey day of all my engineers, the Santa Fe representing my steam past and my diesel locomotive love. Have I learned anything about those engines lately? No, but I’m on my way to learning more about them. Now I sit here throwing orange peels behind me between the rails of the cage. I drink my lemonade and enjoy the cool breeze that signals spring is here in its California way, hot one moment, cold the next. It is a perfect night to be between engineers.

On the platform appears Kathy, Dave’s wife. She sits down next to him.

“Hi,” she says in that way only wives can affect. He responds. It is cute in a forty year marriage kind of way, and it is nice especially on a night where I’m between engineers.
“Thought I’d hang out with my husband,” she says, this mail carrier who has finally decided it is time to retire. Her retirement date is May 31. She woke up one morning she said and decided it was just time to make the move. She’ll take some time off, she says. Household projects need to be done, Dave says, built in book shelves, moving things from one storage place to another, lots of railroad things to organize. Dave’s house is a virtual archive of railroad history and who knows if any of it will get done, but now it’s time for Kathy to retire. They’ll save one hundred and fifty dollars in gasoline costs, he says. Maybe. But then they’ll spend it some other way you can be sure. Kathy doesn’t stay too long. She still has to be at work and so she leaves us in order to be up at 4:00 in the morning. There’s an engineer I know who probably gets up at 3:00 in the morning to be at work by 5:00. Maybe he doesn’t live as far from his origin point as Glenn did when he took that train. If Glenn is still on the schedule I know, he rises at 5:00 in the morning, the same time I do if I can coax my eyes open to make my trek out to the bus and to the world of magic. This place, the train station, sitting with the railfans, is magic. It is love; it is therapy for the rest of my always interesting life, it is the place to be between engineers.

The phone rings and lets me know that if I don’t depart soon from this happy place I will be even later getting home and I don’t want to be late for work, so I should get home in time to get some sleep and have sweet train dreams.

I get to my feet, hoisting my red backpack to my shoulders, this quiet night coming to an end.

“have a good one,” says Larry, I respond, telling my company goodbye. I head off to my bus and to the doughnut shop to indulge in sweets while I wait for my second bus home. Tonight it is my love, my romance, my enjoyment, therapy for the work day, time outdoors, here I am between engineers, and loving every minute of it. Happy Easter to you and all yours, all my engineers.