Metrolink 111: Being With Trains
Shelley J Alongi

 

Today is Wednesday October 15, and something is conspiring to get me down to the fullerton train station and will stop at almost nothing to do it. Last week it was my concern for two cats that gave me a chance to comfort myself with trains. Today it is something entirely different.

Everything is going perfectly fine this morning, I wake up on time, hop in the shower, get dressed, grab my bag and my keys and head out to catch the bus to work. My early morning commute consists of two buses, one at 5:35 in the morning and the other at 5:57 or if I�m lucky even earlier depending on traffic and if the bus driver sees me running to catch the bus and decides to wait for me an extra minute while I negotiate the funny little pathway between the loading docks. Today he decides to wait. After knowing that I�m catching his bus for the last two weeks or so when eh waits the drivers will usually wait for me, but then there�s the occasional one who doesn�t glance in the mirror and I end up waiting an extra ten minutes. Whatever bus I end up taking I usually get to the Starbucks I frequent at the corner of Anaheim and Lincoln early enough to have some sort of breakfast, a meal which I generally take quite seriously since it is the only one I�ll get for at least four or five hours. Today the routine goes as usual, I catch the first bus and the second one and end up at the counter when I discover that my wallet with all my money is missing. I am dismayed. I know exactly what happened. I leave it on the second bus in my hurry to get out my pass and show it to him. He would have been okay with me not showing the pass since I am a regular, but never mind that now, what�s done is done and I�m without identification, money, and credit cards. Ironic thing is I have money in the bank, I just can�t get to it. Now what do I do?

A phone call to work grants me an additional day off without penalty to take care of the situation, drawing vacation pay, and so now I�m free to see if I can locate my missing identity. Well, that isn�t going to happen for a while, I have to wait till 10:00 AM, at least to even find out how to go about locating my items. Then the brilliant thought hits me: go to the fullerton train station and just relax. I�m going to have to do something and I�m a little keyed up, maybe it�s just time I go there and be with trains. Most rail fans go to the station to watch trains. Conversations stop when approaching engines engage attention, but me I go to be with trains. I�ve discovered that�s what I do. I can watch them, wonder about he people driving them or getting into them, ask how many engines are pulling the train today, but for me, it�s about being with them, experiencing their sounds and easing my tension over the Metrolink 111 crash, establishing that vital connection point with my main interest, the deceased engineer. I know the Metrolink 111 has made at least one hundred successful runs since then so I�m not really afraid of them, but for me there�s just something still very poignant about all of this. I guess I just keep wondering what it�s like to know you�re going to be hit by a freight train. You can read the other essays I�ve written on this to experience all my exquisite reactions in all of their brutal honesty and unfairness, or simplicity, however you choose to look at it.

Today since I�m now off work to deal with my own crisis, I find myself at the train station again, watching and being with trains. The experience is quite enlightening.

But first things first. One of the things that happens when I make the passions of others my own is that I like to see tangible results of the energy that I�ve invested in being interested. Whether it�s a video about our local airport or a photographic exhibit, I like to touch something to know that I was interested in something vital to my learning and education process. Through my life I can see notebooks of articles that I�ve put together on subjects that have been of interest to me and these are tangible results of my curiosity. This time the idea is a simple one, one that I�m hoping at this writing is not going to be derailed by some unforeseen glitch of bureaucracy. It�s just a simple thing and I know someone somewhere will want it. I�m not going to give up quite yet, it�s far beyond me to give up till I�ve pried the last vestige of hope out of any situation. I do have one interest that so far has only yielded a notebook full of articles, and a severe reprimand by someone I admire, but life isn�t over yet, who knows what will happen with that interview process I want to complete with one of the prosecutors on the Timothy McVeigh case. But that has nothing to do with this one, except that I could end up on a train to Chicago and catch it right out of the fullerton station if my interview subject ever changes his mind and allows me to conduct a personal interview with him for historical purposes. In the meantime the Metrolink 111 engineer idea is kicking around here and I�ve almost got everything I need to complete it. The key component I think is patience, and a little more time. If my life keeps presenting excuses for me to miss work and I can get everything together without too much difficulty, this one may get done more quickly. If not, I�ve learned to wait for what I want. I can wait a little longer.

So what is this idea and what does the fullerton train station have to do with it? I would simply like to put up a memorial plaque with a picture of him and a small caption explaining who he was and what happened and that this is a simple memorial designated to remember him by. There�s no political statement, no passing judgment over what did or didn�t happen, no huge discussion about rail safety or anything so complicated: just a simple plaque with name and dates and picture and maybe a poem I wrote commemorating him. The obstacles to taking a picture and hanging it on the wall sometimes seem to be insurmountable. Today while sitting at the table at the train station I decide to get the process started. I explain my interest to the Amtrak agent who says I�d have to ask Metrolink but there�s no Metrolink official here at the station and she doesn�t think that Fullerton would let me do something like that. A call to metrolink produces a very interesting conversation with a guy who I can hardly understand because he�s talking so fast. I don�t remember what department he says he�s with or anything so I ask him and he says he only gave me his name. Oh boy, I think, this is like my job at work, dealing with short conversations on the phone and so I says well if you�ll give me a minute I�ll tell you what I want. Since when does putting a picture on a wall take on such monumental proportions? No worries, I think, just keep my eye on the final result. This is where my heart is, this is what I want to get done. So I patiently explain to him what I want to do to which he responds that I don�t need metrolink permission to do this, but I will have to talk to Fullerton if I want to place the picture at the station. Well I could have told him that. It so happens that I�ve had a few dealings with the city of Fullerton, the biggest one being the implementation of the Fullerton airport project which consumed so much of my time three or four years ago. The tangible result of yet another passion, and it was a big project. So maybe I know where to start. For here and for now I�m wondering what�s stopping me from taking a hammer and a nail and putting up the picture. What�s stopping me is that everything isn�t in one place, I need to go get the frame and see how everything is going to fit together in it. When I have the picture and the caption and everything together then I�ll go banging down Fullerton�s door to donate the picture. By then my hair will be a little grayer and I�ll need another highlight job to retain its original dark color, something my hair stylist would love to do, I�m sure.

After I make my phone calls to get the memorial process started, exactly what happens at the Fullerton train station to make me spend five hours there? First of all, sitting on the planters in the early morning a man named Richard, a retired Fullerton resident comes up to me and asks me if I�m waiting for the Metrolink. No, I�m not waiting for it, I say, I just came to be here. it turns out that he�s headed up to Union station to go to the farmer�s market today in L.A. and that he attends all the farmers markets in the area, even the one across from the building where I work in Anaheim. Richard says that he takes the Red line to the market and that the metrolink engineer was text messaging and shouldn�t have been. Sounds familiar, everyone is starting to repeat the same story I think we�re all reading the same information. It seems everyone has done the NTSB�s job. They can shut down the lights and go home it�s all over, judgment has been passed, sentence pronounced, no need for a jury or an impartial investigation. Nope, we�ll just slam the books shut on this one and wait for the next disaster.

Moments later his train arrives and he�s off to Union Station. Repositioning myself up at the patio a group of rail fans hovers around me, I think it�s more because the shade is where I am and so I insert myself into their conversations. They talk about cruise ships they�ve been on or where they want to go and then conversation stops as we watch trains. There are a couple of freights that come through the place. When I spy my first freight there are a couple of tears, but not many. I�m not sure if it�s the shock of having to locate my identity or the last month that makes me want to cry sometimes, but it usually passes without too much trouble. I imagine at some point I�ll cry but not today, not here and not for now. I just like being here. I�m discovering that it�s a place to get away from my computer and my cats, the people I deal with on the phone at work. I deal with people at a call center and sometimes you just want to hang up that phone or I say what kind of question was that? Funny, in one of the articles I read about Robert M. Sanchez a story was related where someone said they were unable to go to lunch with him so the conversation got short and he hung up abruptly. When I read that I thought well I could have been dealing with that same incident on the phone I can�t count the number of times I�ve been hung up on. It�s all in a day�s work, and I know I�ve done it a few times. It was just kind of funny to think of work while I was reading that article. Today I�m not hanging up the phone or no one�s hanging up on me, I�m just sitting here, chasing the shade, feeling the approach of the warm sunshine, enjoying the light breeze in my hair, and listening to the conversation and sometimes participating. Today I insert myself in the conversation rather than just take on the role of the silent observer. One of the guys is taking a private car tour next year, train car that is. Suddenly a guy shows up and sits at my table and asks if he can sit with me out of the sun. Sure, I say. His name is Dean and he�s just gotten off the Amtrak Pacific Surf liner for the sole purpose of watching trains come to Fullerton. He orders breakfast which reminds me that by now, since it�s 10:00 I�m hungry but I don�t have any money to order lunch at the caf� and I�m sure the caf� isn�t going to give me free food. Starbucks does this morning when I discover my wallet is missing, but this isn�t Starbucks, I haven�t established a reputation for being here yet.

As we sit and watch and listen and talk, we can hear the radio station in the caf�, hear the clinking of glass bottles as someone stocks the refrigerator. Pigeons fly up in front of us, cooing for food or to each other, their wings catching the bright morning sunshine as it cheerfully greets us. The sun glints off the tracks, silent for now, awaiting their impressive freight. A few passenger trains sneak in, Amtrak announces a track change for the northbound Goleta train, a train that I�m going to get on here pretty soon. A moment of humor occurs when the announcer tells anyone boarding the northbound train that they must �Find the pedestrian bridge� so that they can cross the tracks. The train is heading north on a track usually reserved for southbound traffic. Somehow someone finds that funny and I start laughing. I think the humor was more in the way the announcer made the statement or even perhaps that anyone here could find the bridge, it�s not that hard to locate.

Suddenly as the train leaves, I have this urge to get on the train and go through that sharp curve out of Chatsworth, the one that leads to the Simi Valley station. It is hhere on this curve where the accident occurred. I�ve been through that tunnel so many times coming off the coast Starlight late at night, and he had been through that tunnel, too, so many times. It�s like a fist in the gut thinking about how the train coming out of that tunnel suddenly encountered the commuter train on the stretch of track. It makes me think of what we do everyday and how one day can go wrong. There�s a major street crossing I do every day on the way home from work and you can bet that I�m a hundred times more careful than I�ve ever been. Two years ago I was afraid of that crossing for all my own reasons, but now no longer afraid I�m extra diligent about crossing it. One engineer stated in an article about turning that curve that not to be paying attention beforehand gave him heart palpitations. I know the feeling. This is why part of me wonders if Robert M. Sanchez really wasn�t paying attention? I guess if he did miss those signals there wouldn�t really be any need for paying attention, but at this point it�s only speculation and we�ll never know. I�m going to hop on that train and go through that curve, I want to do that and maybe it�s just because I can.

Someone mentions going by the place where that accident occurred. �That is a sharp turn,� he says.

�He had driven that stretch so many times,� I say. �So many times.�

Someone mentions that he didn�t hit his brakes.

�Why should he?� I say. �What would it have mattered?�

�True,� concedes the retired rail fan.

�I really feel bad for that engineer� I say, and I do. You know that.

I don�t� get any arguments today from the rail fans but I don�t get any support either. That�s fine.

�I think he knew he made a mistake,� I said. Maybe it just feels better to say that to ease my own mind because I can�t imagine an engineer not knowing. Then I can�t imagine half the calls I get at work either, but still this is much more serious than having to deal with whether or not my guests get queen beds or not. You �d be surprised what people worry about when planning their vacations. Still, this is a much more serious matter and has to deal with life itself. It�s still unfathomable. The unfathomable part is that we�re never going to be able to ask. As one mourner stated on his memorial page, if he had known he was responsible for this he would have taken it back a thousand times. Maybe the best tribute to this attitude is to put more safety measures into the system, ideas which are already being discussed at great length. Then we have to remember that there are policies about cell phone use in train cabs, and it�s like your mother always said, there are rules there for a reason. It�s a conflict between breaking the rules and paying attention. The very nature of this conflict is why I�m holding out for the explanations of what was found in the train recorder box. As of this writing, the jury is out on that one.

Today what drives me from the Fullerton train station is hunger. At noon I�m on a bus back to Cal state fullerton where I briefly stop by the Oral History department and sign an invoice for a pay check. Then it�s off to the bank to get cash and then to eat. Tomorrow I�ll go by the station again since I won�t find out whether or not my missing wallet was found till the early afternoon. I�ll have lunch there and just simply be with trains.

 

 

Copyright © 2008 Shelley J Alongi
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