Storymania - She Likes Trains: Barely Getting By by Shelley J Alongi

She Likes Trains: Barely Getting By
Shelley J Alongi

Sometimes the conversations here are off topick you might say. No trains, and sometimes miniscal things about trains that only interest historically minded railfans. I don’t know if that’s me or not, I live in the present when it comes to trains. I’m not particularly interested in steam, I’m not going to judge anyone on their interests. I enjoy reading all the general operating rules, some like John the switch key guy foam over narrow gage track and equipment. Some hang out with their cameras taking pictures of trains and putting them on the Internet. Some write down the train numbers. I try to make contact with the engineers. Engineers are like pictures for me. But whatever it is and whatever we come here for, it’s all about passion. Whether it’s passion for fixing old equipment, running trains, or something I haven’t discovered yet, maybe reading the general operating rules for trains, it’s all passion and it’s all good. In some way I guess we’re all barely getting by. We all love it.

“Rules class” I remember texting Glenn my number one engineer way back in those early honeymoon days when meeting engineers was my ambition, yeah, like that’s ever changed! Well, if Glenn with all his forty years of certification on railroads has to take a rules class to keep his certification then what am I doing? Rules class. Yes, barely getting by, I say, just like he said. Barely getting by, he would tell me sometimes when I would ask him how he was doing. He is a tease, but lately, maybe a little bit maybe I feel like I’m barely getting by. But It’s a good barely getting by, I think. If I’m barely getting by it’s because maybe now I’m taking my own rules classes.

Since Kimberly got involved with the museum I have been there several times, and yesterday, Saturday May 28, with an energetic man, Gary, an instructor who says he’s been at that museum forty years. Here we go, another forty year veteran of railroads. This one likes street cars, old street cars, Los angeles Railway street cars, and he teaches the Motorman class at the museum, the class where everyone starts when they want to run trains at themuseum. The cars designed to run on three foot gage track aren’t hard to run but they do require some skill and so it is necessary that we learn that skill.

“he’s been out there forty years because he couldn’t find his way home,” says Tom the schoolteacher on Sunday night as we sit on a quiet train night at the fullerton station. Tonight is a quiet night because there has been signal maintenance between Fullerton and Los Angeles which has stopped traffic between the two points. This affects Amtrak, Metrolink, and BNSF freight traffic.

Later when the signal maintenance is done the trains are still late but there is still no freight traffic. Arriving at the station around 4:00 pm after consuming my Del Taco feast, I learn from Ray who sits inside reading “The Grapes of Rath” by John Steinbeckand claiming continuing unemployment tells me that the Amtrak buses have been outside the station all day transporting passengers to and from Fullerton toward los Angeles and also toward San Diego for southbound traffic. One ice-cream and two diet sodas later, after seeing Norm, Dan, Janice, bob, and Larry, here I stand by the tracks discussing yesterday’s trip to the museum.

“Well he said his wife was going to kill him if he didn’t get home,” I explain to tom, “so I think he knows his way home by now.”
Maybe he’s barely getting by, too. I doubt it. This planning estate lawyer loves the Orange Empire Railway museum and tries to impart all his knowledge to the novice pilots of Los Angeles railway cars. He confuses all of us somewhere along the way, but he is passionate about his passion, something we all out here from cherry with lap band, Frank who remembers riding street cars as a child, one who wants to go into diesel maintenance, me who just want to know how to run the trains without running them, Kimberly who wants to know how to do everything, Mike her friend who is a recruit it seems, I don’t’ know where his interest lies, and anyone else I’m forgetting, all sitting in the wooden floored room of the building next to Jeff’s office can relate to; passion. We’re all passionate about something and passion is what draws me; passion for trains, passion for people who love trains, people who get up early in the morning and rub their eyes, grab their coffee and their keys and go to work to pay for cats and race cars, little girls to take to dances, and whatever else they do; passion for people who spend their lives running these dirty painted machines, pain jobs that fade after two or three years because they’re coats of paint slapped on cold, hard, lovely warm-hearted steel frames, frames that draw all of us whether they’re narrow gage or standard gage runners. Stories of people who love trains and people who love people who love trains. It’s all about passion and barely getting by on no money to fix old equipment but people who love to teach others how to run it. It’s passion about people who respond to passion.

“I’m just fascinated by running trains,” I tell Gary by email this week. We start up a lively correspondence. I can’t qualify as a motorman he says because I can’t see out the window, but he can show me how to run the street cars and by the way if you’re fascinated with rules, then here’s the 6th edition of the General Code of Operating rules put out by the Federal Railroad Administration, FRA. You can give the talks to the people on the street cars and help be the conductor. I can qualify you as the conductor I’ll sign off on that, he says. I agree. I wouldn’t want to run the train right now, I have no depth perception out the window, I don’t’ know how close or how far things are from me housed by that steeel frame, but I’ll fit in where I can and hey if I can qualify as a conductor on the museum railroad then I can work both lines and I can communicate with the engineers. I can be passionate with people who are passionate about railroading. I can get the exams from the guy who teaches the engineer qualifying class. I can learn if the people who run the trains here are FRA certified engineers or if they’re only museum operators. Leslie, one of the engineers out here, they call her Rain, wears bells, so there, now we have something in common. Well, we have two things n common. We’ve both sat at the sweet controls of the ALCO Orem 1956. And we both like bells.

“I’ no expert,” I tell Gary and Steve, the man who teaches the general code of operating rules class, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t become one.”

They want me to help teach the class some time. I can help. The museum is starved for helpers. I can be passionate and learn about trains and there are so many out here who are passionate. It makes for interesting experiences, personality clashes, friendships, sticking together, running trains, and learning.

“None of us are experts,” says steve, the GCOR teacher. No, but we’re all passionate. And the day is coming, says someone when the FRA will think it has to administer this railroad, too, so we need to follow the rules, do it theFRA way. Street cars aren’t trains, says the FRA. But trains are trains.

“when I see you again I’ll be halfway through the book,” I tell Dave Noris tonight, Sunday, as I prepare to go down to the Spaghetti Factory and eat. I haven’t had a meal there for a while and a quiet freight night and good conversation puts me in the mood for pasta and ice-cream. Oh yeah, I already have had ice-cream today, but no matter, my mother isn’t watching, I’m goin to have ice-cream twice today.

“There will be a rules quiz,” he tells me.

“Uto, then I really better call Glenn!”

I laugh.

“One day he’s going to hang up the phone, sobbing, just go away!”

I’m dramatic by the railroad tracks.

“Or you’re going to get Fed Ex shipments of cats.”

“Yeah you’ve told me that for ayear,”I say, “but maybe it’s just not time yet!”

Maybe I will get shipments of cats in my new railroad bag, something I might buy with my pay check from my latest Cal State fullerton pay check. I made a trip here last Monday but when I got home that night I had work in my inbox so I figured I should stay home and do the work. Then I had the class on Saturday and so here I am today, Sunday at the station. I’ve had work, the class, written two articles, one for the Gazette and one for the online journal, emailed Steve Grande about publishing my writings on Trainweb. He’s responded and told me that Carl can train me to upload the writings myself. Sounds good so we’ll see where that goes from here. I’ve typed the transcript, proofed it, emailed it and sent the invoice. I think I deserve a train or two And I barely get one. The quiet night sees to that, but the conversation is good.

Earlier today, in the comfortable warmth of the Sunday evening, between 784 and number 4 to Chicago, between railfanning, picture taking, kids running up and down the platform, people rolling bags to the parking lots, my unofficial first engineer, a black man with two sons and a wife pulls up a chair in the Santa Fe café and then goes out with Janice to watch for green lights. We all move out to the table where I place my Diet Pepsi and here he is, Norm, yes, the freight engineer, my unofficial first because I knew him before I knew Glenn, just didn’t talk to him. Apparently a month ago he asks Janice where I’ve been, shows how much of a fixture I am, and is informed that I work Sunday or Monday and don’t make it to the station. Now here I am and here he is. I’ve called and left him a message a few weeks prior to this day, letting him know that indeed I don’t make it on Sundays it was nice of him to ask and so now we greet each other. He sounds like he has sinus congestion, probably allergies, the wind has been kicking up regularly for the last few weeks, I have a bit of my own sinus discomfort, so it’s normal here to be congested and scratchy in the voice.

Norm, our active BNSF engineer, is retiring in a month, he can’t wait, he says. Will he miss the railroad? Maybe, but not right away he insists. Just like anything one needs a break, I suppose and he’ll get one. Right now, the table rocks, my Diet Pepsi comforts my need for burning tastes, or caffeine, maybe it’s that, and we wait. Number 4 comes, we part company, and now it’s time to take the platform in search of more adventure.

Chasing trains these days would be absurd in a movie, tom the school teacher says when I mention the Harold Loyd comedies where he steals a street car to find his girlfriend. Special affects were more creative back then, I say. Yes, today you’d have to terrify passengers and menace them. It wouldn’t be comedy anymore it would be absurd to do that.

Sometimes the conversations here are off topick you might say. No trains, and sometimes miniscal things about trains that only interest historically minded railfans. I don’t know if that’s me or not, I live in the present when it comes to trains. I’m not particularly interested in steam, I’m not going to judge anyone on their interests. I enjoy reading all the general operating rules, some like John the switch key guy foam over narrow gage track and equipment. Some hang out with their cameras taking pictures of trains and putting them on the Internet. Some write down the train numbers. I try to make contact with the engineers. Engineers are like pictures for me. But whatever it is and whatever we come here for, it’s all about passion. Whether it’s passion for fixing old equipment, running trains, or something I haven’t discovered yet, maybe reading the general operating rules for trains, it’s all passion and it’s all good. In some way I guess we’re all barely getting by. We all love it.