She Likes Trains: Station Gold Talkers, foamers, engines, and one thing in common: obsession with the rails. It’s all good. I’ll take it. Engineer Analysis Concentrating so much on my interaction with engineers has pushed some of the activities at the Fullerton train station back to the recesses of my mind. There is an overwhelming theme, however, and that is that I am getting comfortable with the rhythm of the station, recognizing many of the railfans there who come to escape recession, reality, trouble, or just to enjoy pleasant evenings. I’ve probably said more than once that being interested in trains has helped me get outdoors. Sometimes I make my way from one place on station property to another just to gain different perspectives and talk to different people. At other times I find a quiet place away from people and create. I haven’t worked on the story of Glen Streicher my railroad engineer, but then perhaps it is because I am involved in my own story of railroad engineers that I haven’t concentrated on my fictional one. It’s kind of ironic that the first engineer I actually interact with on a regular basis has the name of the one I made up last year when I was too shy to interact with them. I don’t’ think I was ready to interact with engineers last year though I wanted to do that. You can read references to me discussing wanting to meet them as far back as November of 2008. Sometimes I tease Bob and Janice and say it’s their fault I met engineers. Bob always said if I wanted to meet an engineer I needed to go to the engine and it was Janice who took me up to one and showed me where he was sitting. “I started the cupids,” she says once. Because I’ve wanted to meet an engineer since November, there is a very emotional connection with Glen. He is friendly, and I do respond positively to friendly personalities but there is a bit of mystery, too. Sometimes, maybe it’s the age thing, maybe it’s because the most powerful connection I’ve had is with the death of an engineer, but I sometimes find myself crying about meeting him, grateful, respectful of the effort it takes for him to interact with me. He could just sit up there and not wave. He could just not talk to me. I don’t’ know what made him do that. He doesn’t realize the importance I place on interacting with him. I hope someday to show him that without making him uncomfortable. I’ve never had these kinds of reactions to one person; maybe it’s just because that accident really changed the course of my life. The romance, the mystery, the knowledge, the pleasure, the simplicity, it’s all very important to me. I would almost say, without knowing him, that I do love him; I admire him. If he ever needs someone to make him feel special I hope I’m a candidate. There are sure some interesting people in the world and he is one of them. “You sure meet interesting people,” my dad tells me once over the phone. This is in reference to meeting engineers and also I think when I call him I’m always on some train trip somewhere or planning one. “I get around don’t I,” I told him once on one of my first trips to Chatsworth. “yeah,” he said, “you do.” Sometimes I don’t’ think I do, but I do. I can go through periods where everything is just ordinary and then suddenly things just happen. You know how to make things happen,” my Pampered chef director told me when I was selling kitchen items and cookware. I guess I do know how to make some things happen. Right now I’m interested in coffee with a railroad engineer who can help answer engineer questions. I have to admit that I’ve never tried so hard to get one man’s attention from the time I learned his name, gave him the note through Richard his conductor, and stood and waved at him a month before Janice showed me where he was and then two days later he spoke to me out his window. Who is this mysterious man? I don’t’ know but apparently I know how to pick them. I didn’t pick him. I think God picked him. Well anyway I just have to be patient and I do have my list of questions. I endure a lot of teasing from the patio faithful, things that might make me blush, things that don’t at all relate to my interest. Some of the things perhaps I would never think of; but what matters to me is that I take myself seriously. I know what I want to ask him. I have my list. Andy says it’s a good idea that I have my list. It is a very important thing for me to have my list because if I don’t then my trip will be wasted. Now I just have to get the meeting. So Jolee my pampered chef director was right. I do like to make things happen. He just seems friendly. I want to talk to him outside his cab; he seems personable; quiet, gentle, knowledgeable with lots of stories. I may have it all wrong but somehow I don’t’ think so. I’m usually pretty good at judging someone’s character if I follow my intuition. I’m going to follow my heart with this one; I’m going to make it work. And then I’m going to go out and meet more people who run trains, engineers included, and probably a few others, too. Sometimes I go to the train station as an escape to wait while things work themselves out. The station has become a place important on many levels. From the first day when I just sat and wondered about the people running the trains, to last Friday when I waved glen off to his final destination, both of us looking forward to sleeping in on Saturday, the station has evolved from a place to collect solace to a place to gather memories, friends, solve problems, and maybe create them. “I come from an academic background,” I tell Dave Norris sitting by the railroad tracks one night. “When I tell people I want to meet an engineer I’m used to being taken a little more seriously.” One of the reasons I gave up academia was because I thought sometimes things were taken too seriously. At least if I mentioned a project or an idea someone would support it or encourage me in a direction. Not here. Perhaps the only one who has encouraged my questions is Andy the Metrolink agent. He is the one who told me I should have one question a day and it’s a good idea to have my list. He does tease me but it’s okay. At least he takes me seriously. The others? I think they just want to tease me. It’s fun I have to admit that, but it’s still my intension to treat my engineer with respect and dignity and place value on him as a person and his time. Maurine says he’s friendly and the two Metrolink agents who know him say he’s a good guy. Somehow I know that, too. In the meantime while I’m waiting for an in person meeting with Glen, there are other stories to tell and so here they are in a nutshell. Train Worshippers I discovered a group of railfans between the café and the east end of the platform who I don’t think in railfans world are unique, but they are certainly interesting. A group of men mostly, older ones, some younger scattered in there, a few children, a nod then the former academic middle-aged adolescent infatuated with engineers and the locomotives, the control panels and the different sounds of the engine, sits on the benches. Last week there was a birthday party. Someone had balloons and was blowing them up with an air pump. In the way that older children and younger children, college age males and older ones do, too, the air gets let out in little spurts, reminding one of flatulence. I don’t remember whose birthday it was, but it was someone’s and I’m sure they enjoyed it. Groups stood around chatting. One conversation I got involved with was with a man named Rick. Rick spends a lot of time watching train traffic along Santa Susanna’s pass, a place spanning the Burbank Junction to San Jose. Santa Susanna’s pass, of course, is where the Chatsworth accident occurred. “What do you mean we’re on fire,” Rick tells me, recounting the scanner chatter on September 12, 2008 when Metrolink111 broke the switch and slammed into the Lees dale local at 43 miles per hour, changing my life forever and bringing about a hand clasp with a real, live breathing locomotive engineer. Rick informs me that night that there isn’t a lot of freight traffic that comes through Chatsworth, something I’ve noticed on my few trips there. Rick helps me understand the geographic layout of Santa Susanna’s Pass and was one person listening to the scanner when the accident occurred. I also learn on a different date that the man who writes all the trains down is supposed to have known people who trained with Rob. “He was a pretty good engineer,” Dave Norris says. There were unofficial statements made about the last position he was in taken from cameras in the Union Pacific train, forward-facing cameras which showed him looking down. I always bring up the idea that he knew in the last five seconds that he had made a mistake. “He may have had an oh shit moment,” David Norris speculates, “but it could have been very brief.” Possibly. I still can’t get that engineer’s eyes out of my head. They are forever engraved in my mind, whatever goes on around it, the joy, the interaction with engineers, the laughter, the conversation, and the pleasant evenings, Rob Sanchez’s eyes stay with me. We have so many conversations it’s hard to remember them all, but the thing that stands out is what happens when a freight train comes by. I don’t pretend to understand it and I have to get more details but when certain cars pass by the men on the platform suddenly call out their names. It is funny to watch. The Friday I missed Glen’s train because I was working late I decided to go down to the place and watch the show. I wasn’t disappointed. There were no balloons, but there were lots of calls. Some weeks the group of railfans calling out the Train ca names is larger than others. The week of Thanksgiving there were hardly any fans there, just Brett and Danny and a few younger ones watching videos, emailing each other, and planning a day trip to the Cajon Pass. Their scanner alerted us to the approach of a train or two. On one occasion comments were made about a Union pacific train needing to employ “lots of bells and whistles” between West Norwalk and East Norwalk. At the Norwalk station there was a Metrolink Santa train putting on a show for kids and railfans alike. The idea of the bells and whistles brought smiles and chuckles from the fans on the Fullerton platform. Sometimes you can find Mo and her husband Mel here, too. Mo is undergoing treatment for breast cancer. On one night she holds her head near the tracks as a freight train comes by displacing air. A hair ball sails down the tracks, catching the attention of the foamers. “It’s a Mo ball,” says one of the fans. Who knows at this point who made such a pronouncement. People wonder how she’s doing. “I saw Mo the other day and she was just as mean and nasty as always,” says Andy the Metrolink agent. “Where did you see her?” “At Orange.” Mo is the lady who knows Glen and it is my intension to ask her at some point if he has expressive facial features. His vocal expressions can sometimes be very expressive. They are sometimes rough-edged when he’s cheerful or energetic, and quiet when he’s tired or calling signals, or just quiet. I think he has sweet vocal expressions. I just think he’s sweet. Sometimes if I’m having trouble sleeping I imagine him asleep, his head on that pillow, that moustache resting. Ok you can’t share any of this it’s so dreamy. I told you my attachment is emotional and intellectual. I’m a confused academic. I’m just sweet on an engineer a few years younger than my father. That’s the best kind. He holds a special place in my heart. I think you know that. Outgunning the talkers If you work your way down a little further you’ll find Dave Norris and his group, a schoolteacher, an attorney with a dog who barks at trains, a couple of other train faithful, an me. On any pleasant evening with the advent of freight trains and such one can take part in political discussions or even learn, as I do, about switching locomotive and road switchers and the differences between FP59 and MP36. The MP36 is the locomotive with the e-bell, the prerecorded soon that is not, in my judgment, a bell. The MP is produced by the Boise Locomotive Company, out of Boise, a company which is a subsidiary of Motive Power Industries and has provided locomotives for Union Pacific. If Glen went to work for the Santa Fe in 1970, the Boise Idaho Locomotive company appeared on the scene a year later, just to give you a perspective on the amount of time the company under that name has been around. Some of these companies go back to the 1930s of course and so I’m still in the reprocess of figuring it all out. It is here, sometimes sitting tucked in to the wall with the car cages behind me, sometimes on the benches, and sometimes snug on the ground, that I learn all this, take it all in, decide what I believe and don’t believe, and decide who really knows what they’re talking about and who doesn’t. Each of the men who sit here can carry on a conversation by themselves so it is always fascinating to see who will dominate the conversation at one particular time. It is interesting to note that they all comment on Wally, the man who talks quite a bit. Perhaps he talks more than any of them combined but on any night any one of these guys will give you a run for their money. One nigh Robert the attorney takes about sharks and killer whales. On another night one man talks about his doctor appointment and all the tests he underwent. On another night Dave Norris tells me which authors have written good railroad stories. He responds to a comment I make about wanting railroad stories. I’m talking about real stories of people who run them now, but he provides me information on people who wrote about them in the past. Ok I’ll take both things and add the names to my knowledge base. One thing I’ve carried over with me in my train sickness from my academic training is my need for stories, information. It is ironic that Glen the engineer who may not have an academic degree is the one who reminded me to go to EMD to check for engine specifications. Sweet engineer sitting up in that cab, this time not playing with a remote control in the cab car, he’s the one who told me to go to the source. I had to pay thousands of dollars to learn that; he makes thousands of dollars and knew that, too. My eyes are so full of stars that it takes the man who runs the train to remind me to go to the source, something I learned in Research 101. So I’ll combine fact and fiction and have a good time doing all of it. The overwhelming theme these days is love of the engines, getting to know the fans, meeting the engineers, and establishing an acquaintance relationship with one of them. It is obvious that I am establishing a pattern, showing up as much as I can, and am making myself known. It is all good for now, and overwhelmingly fun. I’ll take it.
Copyright © 2009 Shelley J Alongi |