Storymania - She Likes Trains Catching The Right One by Shelley J Alongi

She Likes Trains Catching The Right One
Shelley J Alongi

Tonight it might be about catching the right one, whether it is the train or the engineer. I leave the station tonight, Thursday, shortly after 9:00 pm because it is so cold. But it has been a great trip. And most of all, my two and a half years have been affirmed. I’m a very happy, star struck, middle-aged teenaged railfan. I’ve caught the right one.

The best news tonight, Thursday December 15, may not be about the trains, at all. But that doesn’t mean it has nothing to do with trains. I reflect, between transcript projects I’ve been working on for the last few weeks, about my railroad journey and maybe Wednesday at 10:53 pm I get my answer about where I’ve am on this railroad journey and definitely how far I’ve come. The news is my overarching excitement tonight while signals from about 2:00 pm onward are in such disarray that Metrolink trains are behind, on different tracks, in two different directions using the same number. Amtrak is way late, freights appear on occasion, traffic is light but always rewarding. Two freights appear together, slightly ahead or behind each other, double stacks, no manifests, but tonight isn’t really about the trains. Has it ever really been about the trains? I think it has, considering I’ve invested money in the purchase of switch keys, a lock, a lantern, and a railroad grip and recently a subscription to Trains magazine. But I’ve gotten way more than money could ever buy even if my number one engineer says he goes to Lancaster for more money. Okay it’s about all that, it’s an industry and a supreme gathering place for stories, attracting my attention for its academic and economic endeavors, and anything else I’ve attributed to it over the last two and a half years of keeping my railroad journal. Personality, history, stories, mistakes, love, loss, politics, scandal, cool souvenirs, fulfilling my motto for being passionately involved in whatever I do: Head, hands, heart. I have to have all three components or there’s nothing for me.

But I digress from my original point, as I usually do when talking about trains. Tonight, Thursday, catching the engineer is a bit impossible. If you’re a passenger looking for a Metrolink train, you might think catching the train is impossible. You never know what track the train will be on, when it will get there, and there might even be a crew change, I don’t know that for sure. Glenn tells me once in one of our conversations that when there are significant issues affecting scheduling that scheduling pretty much goes out the window. Get the trains where they need to be, and tonight, that happens. I remember this happening when Glenn was on 608. Switches and signals were awry, and so it has been two years since anything this significant has affected me directly. Last time all I wanted to tell him was that it was hard to get up that morning. Tonight, I am more interested in what is happening on a technical level. I don’t’ have the answer yet, but wait long enough, I’m sure someone will tell me. What does happen tonight is that I don’t catch any of my engineers, but I’ve caught the best one. Yes, I’ve caught him, and so my journey over the last two years, the tears and laughter, and teasing and learning and loss have paid off. I knew they would and I’ll tell you about it.

Let me preface this particular story with some appropriate back story. It has been cold at the Fullerton station, but only in a weather kind of way. I’ve been meaning to come here for a few weeks to give Curt, Scooter Boy, a present: a rubber ball that lights up. I found it at J.C. Penney and I was so intrigued by it that I had to buy it for him. He loves things that light up and he was mightily pleased with this one. He is one of the first people I meet tonight and coming in from the bus I hail him. “Don’t go away I have a present for you!” He carries it on his usual station rounds, appearing on one of them to give me a packet of something that is supposed to warm up when you open it and shake it, keeping cold at bay. I must needs try it. Sometimes he finds cool things like old star bucks mugs that are being discarded or Amtrak snack packs that Shirley has donated to the train cause on the patio, or on one occasion a blue scarf, woolen in texture, that still resides in my top dresser drawer, holding winter gear. That dresser, by the way, was inherited from the daughter of a railroad engineer, my great grandfather, so I guess railroading was just a dormant seed waiting for a bloody catalyst to activate it, bringing me to where I am today.

“Can you tell who it is without looking?”:

I make my way through the cold, crisp evening, caressing the safety line that denotes the gloriously new steel rails with my cane, bells on the railroad grip clanging imperiously, passing the stranded Metrolink passengers who all wonder where there trains are, past the bridge to the south side of Paradise, past the shelters that are largely deserted tonight. Dave and Dave stand talking about the fuel that caught on fire in a tanker truck two days ago on the 60 freeway, damaging a bridge and producing alls orts of speculation about when the bridge will be rebuilt. Wasn’t there a similar accident a few years ago in the Moholland pass? If memory serves correctly, there was, and this accident was not so fatal, though it was monetarily worrisome. Time will tell how that is resolved, but for tonight, it’s time to settle in with the railroad grip, drink a diet Pepsi even though it’s 45 degrees outside where we are, and talk trains, or something similar.

The day has been eventful: lunch/dinner at five Guys a place I try to frequent when I come to Fullerton just because of its dissimilarity to every other restaurant I visit on a regular basis. I take time after lunch to update my manicure, freshening the red nail polish and repainting the snow flake on each hand, something that I think it just fun, something I used to do when I finally got over my shyness about waving to engineers Remember the days when I wouldn’t wave? Those days are pretty much over, though I haven’t felt the need to do that so much, these days. Meet then? Yes. Wave, not so much. That doesn’t mean I won’t do it, it means I haven’t done it for a while, but I’m ready to do it. Tonight as bobby on 608 passes us on track 1 and not track 3, heading toward Ocean Side, is that where he’s going, I wave my cranberry gloves, gesticulating happily Sorry I missed you sweet engineer number 2, but it’s been a crazy day. We’ll meet again. I promise. I make no such promises to Carey tonight, I don’t even make his train. He’s running late due to signal issues, but so am I, and we can’t blame signals for that. I’m running late on my own clock because I always misjudge the bus schedule time, or some such thing. No matter, Twitter has kept me up to date and I know you’re all safe and sound if a little bit frazzled.

But tonight, I have news. News that harks back to the first time I ever came here, the first time I ever wanted to meet an engineer and wouldn’t because I didn’t know how, and I didn’t know enough. I never really thought of meeting anyone who did that sort of thing, I never met one that I knew of, I only heard train horns as they reminded me it was 4:00 AM when I lived in Fullerton, or they accompanied the sounds of quarters filling up the box on the washer as I prepared to do laundry late at night. I’ve always essentially been a night person, and trains are night things, too. There are day trains, of course, but night time fills my senses with train sounds and sights, memories, and ambient noise. Tonight we sit now, watching a train come down track 2 with people in it, a track reserved for freight handling. We see 707 pass by twice, waiting according to my Twitter feed, for train 330 on the San Bernardino line, or rather meeting up with it in Los Angeles. Train 707’s consist becomes a San Bernardino train, says Dave Norris to me as we sit and silently observe. But I’m a little distracted only because I have burning news; heart warming news, small news, but wonderful news, news that harks back to my first foray into the railroading community here.

“I got a text from Glenn,” I now reveal, perching on the wall where the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe cabooses rest, strangely empty, though full of their own history. History is present here and so is space since the cars that have been here are no longer present, instead they gracefully conduct people into their past, taking them on scenic railroad journeys, providing history of their own, or money for someone or some company. Tourist railroading is popular, it seems, but I don’t’ worry or think about tourist railroading so much. I want real interactions with real railroaders. And so I divulge my love struck news.

What was this text message from Glenn? It was simple, short and amazing. Remember how I met him? I gave his conductor on the 608 a note saying I was always standing on the platform just waving, wanting to say hello, and if he saw me I wasn’t lost, I didn’t need the train, I was just there to say hello. I had decided to meet him because he shared the name of the fictional railroad engineer I made up in my story called “Flirting with Monday” which you can read online. I picked Glenn out of the air and now here was someone with that actual name, something I could hold on to. After a year of learning about trains and sitting passively by, it was time to interact. And then there was the nonverbal train meets, the vocal exchanges, the questions, the phone calls, the drama, the restoration of the magic, the learning of the story, the overwhelming, I think, the learning of the wife and kids’ names, the 22 cats, and then the defection; tears, more phone calls, more questions, a burning curiosity slaked by one man’s forty years of experience, the changing of my work schedule, the meeting of more engineers without the relationship, and then, tonight. The analysis, on my part of course he was just going about his own business, the wondering, the bouts of intense anxiety every time I would call him, and then the texting, and now, the text message. This text message affirms all my thoughts and feelings, gushing, nicknames, gleaning, and just plain amazes me. It comes at 10:53 on Wednesday night as I am feverishly finishing a project for Cal state Fullerton’s oral history department. It makes me so happy I can barely stand it. The best part is, I haven’t asked any questions, I haven’t texted him or called, it just comes without any special prompting. I don’t read it till 2:53 in the morning when I finish the project, but I’m awake for an hour, finally losing myself in a book not about trains, but about a musician, my other lifelong interest. I love reading books about people and learning what makes them tick. But tonight I’m so amazed I hardly know what makes my engineer tick, but no matter, here I am tonight, to share the text message with my other go to guy, the other forty year veteran of the railroad. There is magic in the forty year veterans, I think. I hope they pass it along to the next generation. They might need that magic in a world gone cold and hard as the steel rails that transport goods and services and people, and intrigues me.

So what is this amazing text message? “Hope things are going good for you” it starts out. I haven’t asked any questions to elicit a response. I did talk to him briefly a week ago but he was with his family by the Christmas tree so I kept the conversation short. I mentioned to him a plan for meeting him in Los Angeles and he said it might work. But no matter, we’ll get there. Remember I’ve only met him face to face once and that was for less than five minutes outside a train at Union Station when he was out of service and I was heading to San Bernardino. The time before that when I called, I spoke to him and woke him. So we haven’t had any conversations of great enlightenment, just two short ones, where I wasn’t so nervous, only a little, I don’t think this relationship would be fun if I wasn’t a little bit nervous (Andy the Metrolink agent would say I was twitterpated, okay that’s fine.) The next part of the text message isn’t so out of character. None of it is, really. “Have had two days off in the last 6 weeks” he says, something that amazes me only because that’s just a lot of time spent doing something. As long as he gets the prescribed rest periods he can do it. Of course, my maternal instincts are aroused, not having children to practice them on, I usually exhibit them to anyone who comes in contact with me at some time. I leave a voicemail later and say take care of yourself and get enough sleep something I’m sure you know to do. Being rather independent myself I don’t want someone to hover so I try not to in this case. “Talk to you later days” he’s always telling me that, and we always do. The last part is the amazing part. It’s casual and simple and affirming and perfect. “Your friend Glenn” it says. He said it. He wrote it. It must be so. We’re friends. I wanted to meet an engineer, I did it, and now we’re friends. I have plans to meet many others but tonight I’m affirmed again by the right one, the rest, as I told him in 2009, are icing on the cake.

You might not be able to imagine how happy this makes me, I think it further attaches me to the trains themselves. Years ago I said I would take the package as I could get it. I’ll take it. It makes my day! In the voicemail I leave I say thanks for texting me letting me know how you’re doing. He’s always free to call or text me, I don’t think he really does that to anyone on a regular basis, especially if he’s working, but he says he’s my friend, just like he’s friends with so many others. Two years ago Mo said “glenn is rattled by you” and I never believed it. He’s not rattled by me; he’s my friend. Sometimes I wish I could be as nice as he is. But the main thing is, I’m accepted into his life as a friend. I am honored. He’s a very nice guy to know. I hope his family appreciates him, and the cats, and dogs, and birds. Yea! I caught the engineer. And he is the very best.

Yes, this is my news. I haven’t seen the trains much lately, I’ve been working on transcripts which means coming home directly after work. I haven’t read the magazine because I’ve been working on the transcripts. I’ve read a couple of things online but actually getting up close and personal hasn’t happened. I have my full time job, some time off, more work to do in the next two and a half weeks, but it is a leisurely kind of work since I won’t get paid on it till January. So I’ll probably be able to make a few more trips this year to see my engineers. But I caught the very best one, a whole two and a half year journey rapped up in one text message, which, by the way, I haven’t taken off my phone quite yet. Wonder if I ever will?

Tonight it might be about catching the right one, whether it is the train or the engineer. I leave the station tonight, Thursday, shortly after 9:00 pm because it is so cold. But it has been a great trip. And most of all, my two and a half years have been affirmed. I’m a very happy, star struck, middle-aged teenage rail fan! I’ve caught the right one.