Metrolink111: Listening To The Engineer “Be careful,” the word came down from the heights of the locomotive cab, echoing on the cool night breeze that Monday October 12 at the fullerton station. The time is approximately 6:40 pm. “I will,” I reply, talking to the engineer. No, for those of you following the story, Glen has not suddenly decided to talk to me. We’re still in the honeymoon stage with meeting the engineers and glen is my first engineer of choice. This engineer was completely unplanned, but no less welcome. Standing at the side of the locomotive on the platform parallel to track three I waited for Metrolink train 608, not to carry me away to some tourist attraction in Ocean side, but instead to comfort me. Soon, Glen would pull that comforting, huge machine to a stop and acknowledge my presence in two minutes of his very early day. Glen apparently takes one route from Ocean Side to Los angeles in the morning and then goes out on another line, as far as I can tell from the metrolink book in the possession of the man who maintains the machines and answers questions. Glen is still my mysterious engineer. This encounter occurred last Monday while I waited for the 608 to make its usual appearance at 7:04 pm. Train 708 pulled up, I knew there was a late train, its bell clanging, my hands not this time in ready position for waving. I have to work on waving at one locomotive engineer at a time it seems. Hey it took me forever to talk to Norm the freight engineer sitting on the patio. Tonight, the 91 line, train 708 is late. The 91 line serves thirteen stations parts of Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties. The last one passes through Fullerton at 5:59 pm so tonight the train really is late and I get the pleasure of meeting its engineer. The brakes hiss. “Where are you headed tonight?” says the engineer. I can’t believe it! The engineer is talking to me! I’m almost not sure it’s him, but I know it is because I know where I’m standing and I know where the bell is; I know who sits up there. I’m being addressed by the engineer, and it wasn’t someone who got his attention. No, tonight I managed to get the attention of a locomotive engineer all by myself. But wait, hold on, maybe I’ve already done that and just don’t know it. Glen recognizes me and did undoubtedly from that first frantic encounter when I hustled up the stairs to track 8 at L.A. Union Station to meet an obliging train and its thoughtful crew. He knew me the time I came up to shyly wave at his huge machine on track 3. Some would say it’s the man who sits up there touching the dials that I wave at and you would be right because it’s the man and not the machine who waves back. So what is it that makes me think this guy isn’t the engineer? I know he is. “Right here,” I tell him, smiling. “I’m headed right here.” He’s not sure of what I mean; I seem to do that to people, confuse them in some way. Don’t worry, soon they get it. They get that I’m interested in the engineer. I think the usual interest with railfans is the conductor, but I’m interested in the engineer, the Alfa cat sitting up there in that locomotive when they’re not in the cab car playing with a remote control. The ultimate video game, controlling a train, but a live, moving train, not a simulated version such as the one that had Rob Sanchez’s teenage friend on pins and needles. Media sources quote the teenager as telling rob Sanchez he would “do it so good too” from all the practice in the simulator. Rob’s response was brutally honest. He said that it wouldn’t be the same running the simulator and the real locomotive. “I hope you know that,” Rob wrote to the boy seven days before he died. I wonder if that kid still wants to be an engineer. I hope so. Anyway, tonight the engineer is up in the cab. “I always wait for train 608 to wave at it,” I say. “So I’m standing right here.” “Oh,” he says.” He’s behind us,” he tells me. “What train are you?” “We’re the 708 out of Riverside,” he says. It seems they had engine trouble somewhere and so now here they are. “Be careful,” he says and if a locomotive engineer sitting in the cab with a huge expanse of track stretching out before him tells me to be careful I’m going to listen. If the guy on the platform on his bicycle tells me to be careful then I almost ignore it. But if a man running passengers, talking to me out of his window, tells me to be careful I’m going to listen. He should know. He’s the one whose train will be delayed if I step in front of it. His day will be ruined and heck mine will, too. I’ll be dead, he’ll be delayed an possibly upset. I never thought of an engineer getting upset about hitting someone on the tracks till Rob Sanchez apparently lost sleep after the fatality. Apparently he was upset about hitting the guy on the tracks. You can read about this in another essay called “Is She a Foamer.” I honestly have to say that I never would have thought of it if I hadn’t read about this particular incident after the Chatsworth accident occurred. It softens the image of the cruel heartless monster texting and slamming head-on into a Union Pacific freight train. This incident is the basis for the scene in my railroad story where Glen Streicher cries after the train does the same thing and Judy sits with him, starting their relationship on a more serious footing. You’ll have to read the story. “It hurts to see that,” Norm the BNSF freight engineer says earlier to me about the same issue. So tonight at the fullerton station with a Metrolink engineer running late and taking a moment to speak to me and tell me to be careful, I’m in a receptive frame of mind. “What’s your name?” I ask because I always have to ask that. It’s one of the first questions I wanted to know about engineers last year on the patio at the fullerton station. This engineer’s name is Frank. “What’s yours?” he asks. “Shelley,” I say. “Have a good night,” he says and switches on the bell. The engineer pulls his train away and I am left there waiting for my elusive Glen. Officially I’ve spoken with or interacted with five engineers, one BNSF freight, three Metrolink and one Amtrak. If you are counting, here’s the breakdown again. You may have forgotten about Gary Rob’s trainer in Chatsworth. Then there’s Frank and glen with metrolink and Ulysses with Amtrak and Norm with BNSF. The only engineer I really know anything about is Norm and he is married and has two sons nineteen and sixteen years. Oh and wait I haven’t met him yet but there’s the engineer from the metrolink 405 which by the way goes to Los Angeles from Riverside, not the other way around. It seems I mixed up the station sequence so I was unable to locate it in the Metrolink system. I had to call the customer service department and they had to tell me the correct destinations. He’s the cheerful one on the scanner in the morning. I’m starting to scare myself. If I ever show up at Glen’s locomotive with a scanner I’m going to know I’m completely surrendered; oh wait, I already am; I am, I guess in the eyes of at least one engineer, a foamer. “The only place you’re going to find an engineer is in the engine,” Bob Marsh told me once. He was right. I’ve never encountered a train crewmember that I know of in any other place in my life. I did find the two who run the train at Disneyland but that’s the only other place and it did have to do with trains. There is a man, we knew him as KB from church when I was a child who worked for the railroads. I did not know that and my dad just informed me of that about a month ago. I remember his wife and I remember swimming in their pool once but that’s all I remember. Other than that, no one in my circle of acquaintances till this year has ever worked for the railroad. Guess I’ll have to change that. Sometimes when I look over my life so far I see that I’ve met a variety of different people and had an amazing amount of opportunities presented to me. This one is just one in a continuing cycle so line up all my engineers and take a number on my dance card. When I’m not working, home online writing, or involved in some stray project or two I’m now at the Fullerton train station, seeing what there is to see, learning about trains, and just making new friends. Most of them, eventually, will be engineers.
Copyright © 2009 Shelley J Alongi |