Metrolink111: The Case Of The Dejected Engineer
Shelley J Alongi

 

“I don’t know if I was dreaming,” said the Santa Fe historian, “but that engineer looked out the window and looked dejected because no one waved at him.”

Knots of people dotted the north side of the tracks that night, the Southern California Train Travel meetup group’s night to eat together and then watch the Southwest Chief come and leave the station. Bob one of the guys, not the one I usually talk about, and someone else he knew had disappeared on the train, their stop being riverside. They had taken the Metrolink over and returned to Riverside via the Amtrak’s SWC. Now, in the pleasant cool night air, as Amtrak trains pulled up and left, and as freights hurled themselves through the station, everyone sat or stood talking, watching the trains, but maybe not really paying attention, perhaps not in the eyes of one engineer. We don’t even know his name, we only know he looked dejected. Come back, we’ll make up for it, sweet engineer.

Disaster Perspectives

The man who had made the comment about the engineer leant against the Santa Fe Café fence, the famous fence that spans the patio that L.A. Times reporters write about when there is a train disaster, such as the one that has obsessed me for ten months, sixteen days, five hours and 0 minutes. As I look at my clock as I write this, I see that it is 9:23 pm. The Chatsworth accident which I mention occurred at 4:22.23, almost five hours before I discovered it s from that time to this is almost exactly ten months, sixteen days and five hours, give or take a microsecond or two. Ten months after I lay stunned on my couch wondering “what the hell happened!” here I am writing about standing on the loading platform of the Fullerton train station with railfans. Yes, it has come to this. I have joined a train travel group and the first meeting I attended was full of familiar faces and new faces, a retired police officer, Curly’s brother, the Santa Fe historian Larry who engages me in a discussion about rob Sanchez and old theories surrounding the accident. He did pretty much peg my feelings on the subject that night, after he made the comment about the dejected engineer. I wanted to comfort the dejected engineer. Or the dead one? Or both? Myself? All the families who lost loved ones that day, September 12? Or just the engineer who looked disappointed when we didn’t wave.

“So you didn’t necessarily think he’s innocent,” says Larry the historian about my perspective of Rob Sanchez. “You have an open mind.”

“I think it was the age thing,” I said. “And yes I have an open mind. You can’t deny he was texting. That would belike…” I couldn’t’ think of an analogy.

Then I expressed my theory. Ok, since we’re expressing theories, and Larry wondered if Rob wasn’t suicidal, not the first one to wonder that. The day before the accident occurred the modules controlling the signals moving eastbound traffic were replaced due to their difficulty in cycling from green, to yellow, to red. This didn’t necessarily affect the westbound traffic , the direction n which Rob’s train was headed, but it is worth a questioning glance. Many in the aftermath of the Chatsworth accident have wondered whether or not Rob might have been suicidal, the accident being so out of the ordinary. He had taken that same route earlier that day. And so many other retrains had done that. I think I may have discussed that in another essay of mine. And some new information, at least from my perspective. Chris and bob talked to Rob just before the accident. He seemed rational. You can be rational, Larry said,without being rational. Ok but then he would have taken someone with him. I didn’t get it. I don’ know that his friends agree. People are always responding to things on so many levels sometimes it’s really hard to know what’s really in someone’s mind, but I don’t’ think anyone who knew him, or at least not anyone I ever met, thought the accident was deliberate. Not by any means.

The Best Story

The subject drifts into a discussion of a very heavily loaded freight train being pulled by seven engines. That engineer, a different one, had to work very hard to get that train started. Larry asked me to tell him one story from the fullerton train station, to pick one, and so I told him the one about Jason looking for his southbound train and how I wanted to direct him to a southbound train on a northbound track and then how Jason showed up at the bus stop looking for a way to get to Orange. The entire story is in an essay called “Blame the Engineer.” When I told Larry that the man had appeared at the bus stop after wanting to find a southbound train he gave a good laugh. I guess that really was the best story.

Another Chatsworth Connection

I discovered another thing about the people on the platform, and the Chatsworth accident. Larry and two other guys know the conductor on that train. Apparently last weekend he went to a rail festival, I want to say Winter Rail but I don’t’ think that’s it. That means I have to meet him, just like I have to meet Tim the freight engineer who walked by me yakking on the cell phone. Maybe it was a work related call. Who knows. A discussion of the cell phone is what led Larry to ask me if I thought Rob was innocent, that he didn’t cause the accident. Larry mentioned that Bob Hildebrand, Rob’s conductor, had reported Rob for excessive cell phone use.

“He should have,” I said. “He did the right thing.”

I’ve never said Rob wasn’t doing something he shouldn’t’ have been doing. I always make myself clear on that point. I think that surprises people. They think that if I defend the engineer that I think he wasn’t the cause of the accident.

Questions, Questions, Questions

Maybe Rob was the cause of the accident. Maybe he wasn’t. If you believe the signals were working that day he was. All those other trains went though without causing accidents, so the signals must have been working, isn’t that what logic would dictate? Probably. Or maybe the signals weren’t working and everyone wants to cover them up. Why do people say the light out of the station was green? Maybe they’re confusing the signals. If the CP Topanga was going to be red, why did everyone think the light out of the station was green? And if the light really was green why was a freight train coming out of a tunnel? Maybe the dispatcher could have changed the train feet location? Maybe not? Maybe Rob had to pull the train through the next zone to trigger the signal? Maybe not? Who knows. Rob’s not here. We can’t ask him. If the conductor thought the light was green was he really looking? Someone at the Chatsworth hearing said that sometimes conductors get caught up and aren’t looking because they’re doing other things. Matt on that Amtrak train I took from Chatsworth to L.A. to Fullerton didn’t seem to be looking at the signals, just calling out what the engineer told him. I don’t know. These are all questions. Good questions? Bad ones? Questions that people don’t want o answer. Or questions that no one is asking, or that everyone is asking and these railroad guys that have been n the business thirty plus years don’t’ want to answer. They want a scapegoat. Or maybe rob really was at fault and we’re all just spinning our wheels trying to come up with a reason. I’m sure the NTSB has it’s mind made up as to the cause of the accident. I haven’t seen the final report yet. This is what they’ll probably say if they don’t get any new information. They’ll say that it can’t be conclusively shown that text messaging distracted the engineer to the degree that a signal was missed. Questionable signal colors will be dismissed because post accident tests show that the signals had been working despite some doubt on this point. There was no sound recorder box in the cab, only the event recorder which showed when the engineer sounded the horn, operated the brakes, and did whatever else those things record. Cameras would have helped solve the question, maybe. The NTSB had asked for records of Rob’s random signal calling out tests and other tests I don’t remember now, I’m relying strictly on memory to write this down. That’s what they’ll say. They’ll say that most likely the probable cause of the accident was text messaging by the engineer’s phone.

The next phase, which has already started, we see reports about it on occasion, will be the endless lawsuits against metrolink for not installing other safety measures or for using a company that hired engineers with questionable criminal records or something. What another Lon year it’s going to be.

And then there’s me, making a plaque for the engineer, and we’re at a standstill on that, at least I think we are. I won’t think about that for a few weeks yet. I predict that the final phase will occur in another year or two when people won’t be so upset with the engineer or they will have forgotten him and will not view him so harshly. Who remembers the cocky engineers of the nineteenth century who may have caused accidents because they thought they could control the trains? Rob’s plaque will find a place somewhere. One person who writes on the L.A. Times memorial page set up for him, probably prefers that I take that plaque to hell and meet him there. I’ll always remember him with kindness because there’s no chance for a man who is about to get creamed by a freight train to say he’s sorry. So I’ll say it for him.

Tonight I won’t think about apologizing for Rob Sanchez or any of the unanswered questions about the accident. Instead, what I will think about is that I met a bunch of railfans. We hung out together on the platform, we ate at Bourbon Street Restaurant, a little pricey, but not too bad, and it was just loads of fun.

The thing About eyes

“When I was using single magazines,” said Larry, to communicate with women, he said the first thing women wanted to know was the color ofhis eyes. That made me laugh. Remember when I asked what color Rob’s eyes were? I’m sure Lilian does. She had to go get a picture of her friend the metrolink engineer to determine the color of his eyes. They war brown. That just made me laugh.

“Why do women always want to know what color eyes are,” he said. “I don’t even know what color my eyes are.”

Good Night, Good Wave

By the time I decide to go visit the little girl’s room at the Spaghetti Factory and order an Italian soda with a glass, everyone has left the station. When I get back to my spot and drink the soda and prepare to catch my bus, Larry is gone. Dan has disappeared. I am along with my freight trains, and I am happy. The funny thing is that the next day, leaving work and discovering the absolutely beautiful evening, I decide to stop by the station for a few hours. There will be no cheese burger, no ice-cream, no Diet Pepsi. There is only freight trains, and me, finally, waving at the engineers.

 

 

Copyright © 2009 Shelley J Alongi
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