She Likes Trains: Chatsworth Ephiphany Tonight it seems, as perhaps has been the case for the last two years, and even the discovering of the Harvey Girls and the museum, it is all about the story. One story intrigues me: the one who operates a train to Lancaster even now, his story intersects mine right where I met it on September 11, 2009, and now, he makes me smile, because he rings my favorite bell. My Chatsworth ephiphany, my shoulder injury, fatalities, and stories, they are all part of the adventure and I can�t wait to get back to see what the next one will be. March 2011 is much different in the train adventure than the same month in 2010. it was a year ago this month that I sat on the platform mourning the loss of my number one engineer, a man whose information is priceless. It�s a year later and I�ve talked to him several times. He doesn�t seem to be, as Mo put it to me, �rattled about you.� Glenn rattled by me? I don�t think so. Not if he has a wife with 22 cats, three grown children all of whom may or may not be partially dependent on him, and a racing team, a sometimes fankless profession that requires his full attention and has it seemed from the latest Twitter feed, been rather adventurous on his line, at least. My number one engineer has had to forego stops at the Palmdale station due to police activity, has been delayed and God only knows what else. I haven�t talked to him since his train without him hit someone near Sylmr. I�ve left several texts and one voicemail. �By the way, if you wondered,� I text him two weeks ago, �I still think you�re the best.� Maybe he smiles. Maybe he shakes his head in dismay. I think he likes it. �Playing thee organ for Easter choir. Haven�t forgotten my questions. Ring my favorite bell,� is the missive I leave on his phone last Monday March 28. Over the weeks I let him know of my progress through my train journey. �Went to the orange Empire rr museum. Interesting place.� This message comes to him a month ago after Kimberly and I return from a meeting of the Harvey Girls. The Harvey girls, it seems, remember the women who served the traveling public in the Harvey Houses present on the Santa Fe line in the 1800s and early 1900s. They are simply dressed, black and white, long skirts, blouses, and aprons. In the age before air conditioning perhaps a little stifling, only a memory of a bygone era. Many engineers, conductors and railroading crew, says James Marshall in his book �The Santa Fe: The Railroad that Built an Empire� found a willing wife from among the Harvey girls. It was one of the rules that a Harvey girl would not marry for six months while in employment with the service because, for many, in those days, marriage meant the ending of the career which brought families for some and helped support all in some way. Wonder if any of them ever met the engineer of their dreams! Guess I have the best of both worlds: I met the engineer of my dreams without having to marry him. Now that would be an adventure! But alas, and probably for the best, I live in this day when I can attend a meeting of those who remember those romantic days of service. The Harvey Girls, now, at the Orange empire Railroad Museum, are mostly retired women, perhaps some younger ones who work, married to railroaders, whose mission I am still not sure of. The only thing I know right now about the Harvey Girls is that they bake cookies and sell them at the Railroading show, they have a tea coming up on April 2, and they have a new member, Kimberly, my friend who loves Disneyland. Kimberly who has no particular passion for trains is now a member of the Orange Empire Railroad Museum, thus making her a member of the Harvey Girls. She will be assisting in her first function on April 2. and me, the dye hard, engineer chasing railfan? Am I a member of this illustrious group? No, not yet. My finances won�t handle it yet. My curiosity about wanting to know what they actually do stops me, too. I�m decidedly more interested in the day to day operation of the trains rather than the lacy guilt edges of museum society. I think I�ll join but I don�t know quite yet. I know one thing, I will enjoy, when I finally do it, baking cookies. �You�re in an organization with mo,� I tell Kimberly, who knows all the stories or at least the most important one, the one that credits her with trying to cause trouble wit Glenn. Glenn wasn�t bothered by Mo, he hasn�t run away, yet. But she des have a presence there. She assisted in her husband�s booth at the swap meet hosted by the museum at which the Harvey Girls sell their cookies. I buy some, of course. I think it�s probably okay to join them, they seem like an eclectic group, maybe they need an engineer enthralled person in their midst. One thing is for sure, they�ll remember the bells. I�ll keep you posted on when and if I join them. I seem to be making my own way in the railroading world, and now it seems Kimberly is making her way, too. �I would call you and ask you questions,� I text Glenn on another occasion, �but I�m laid up with a shoulder injury.� Yes that has been the other event in my railroad journey. Five weeks ago I carried a heavy backpack of groceries home and suddenly couldn�t move the shoulder that I had broken ten years ago. The same night I texted Glenn, I found myself in the emergency room having my shoulder x rayed, walking out with two pain prescriptions and a muscle relaxer, and some instructions on how to use them. It occurs to me as I get out of the cab and leave my cell phone, another drama entirely, that I am lucky I have excellent medical insurance. The pain keeps me housebound for a week, my trains languishing without me. This happened just before the trip to the museum and Dave�s question, emanating from the blanket where he sits with Kathy on thee grass away from the vendors, enjoying a picnic lunch, �busy week?� gets the full story of my injury. I show up four days later at the station, six days, it seems, after another fatality. Yes, another one, this time involving my third engineer, bobby, in Santa Anna, perhaps the sane location where Cary has his only a week earlier. Bobby, the one who missed the 608 holding at Anaheim and who calmly announces �some bastard got hit� in reference to Cary�s incident, now has hit one of his own. �It was a suicide,� announces my stout hearted stock broker engineer when I appear at his train, the Wednesday after the trip to the museum, nursing my shoulder, assisting its movement with my left hand, still carrying a few heavy duty pain medications, and making my only trip that week. Bobby shows sympathy when I tell him about my shoulder, and then goes off into the sunset. I don�t� remember much about that trip, maybe it was all the medication, I only know that my trips to the station are curtailed for the next few weeks because though I return to work my shoulder is still tense and painful and I find myself at home every night falling asleep or taking pills, cooking because I�m so broke, and getting ready to do it all again. It is these things that keep me away from the station, besides the return of a Bible study at a church in Cypress, ten minutes from work, where a friend of mine leads the music and another friend, one I happened to meet on the bus, a driver, also attends. Slowly, my life is returning to some semblance of normalcy, but this time with the added adventure of trains. They are part of me, never forgotten. In the back of a medicated or clear mind calmly rests the memory of my number one engineer and two others who show up regularly, do their jobs, and all, it seems this year, three months into it, have missed or been involved in fatalities. Sitting at home relaxing in my recliner, or finally sitting at my computer which is a little easier now than it has been in the last month, I notice that my phone is silent. The trains are running on time, the only delays seem to be, with the exception of police activity in Palmdale, track maintenance. When I go back to the station I�ll have to ask about debris on the tracks, apparently train 707 was delayed out of Fullerton because of debris on the tracks. I�m sure Dave or Curt will know watt�s going on. The thing of significance, I think, for me in march, as far as railroading goes, occurs on a Sunday, probably March 20, in the midst of my active social life, going to Disneyland for Kimberly�s daughter�s sweet 16th birthday, rehearsing in the Easter choir, and whatever else I do in those days, and there�s plenty after the pain meds ware off and my shoulder slowly responds to my attempts to rehabilitate it, is the reading of the final report of the Chatsworth accident. Yes, finally, a year and four months after the National Transportation Safety Board releases its findings on the accident that catapulted me into railroading, I have occasion to sit down and read it. This, I think, as I look at the 151 page document, is what I�m used to, isn�t it? It looks very academic with charts and graphs, financial analysis, detailed train movements and human crew movements, and yet, reading through the pages and remembering all the things that havbe happened and the people I�ve met on the way to getting here shows me that this is more than just an academic exercise in futility. In this document resides the catalyst of my journey; in this document rests the memory of twenty-five people who died as a result of a carelessly texting engineer. Yes, you would know of course that the report would find that the probable cause of the accident was texting, not anything that anyone would readily admit to, but you knew was in the back of everyone�s minds, especially when a teenager showed a news reporter a just received text message from Rob Sanchez, one that refers to the meeting of train 796, a Pacific Surf liner, one train that I have seen countless times over the last two years. �Usually at north Camarillo� says the engineer of Metrolink 111, just before striking the Union Pacific 6512 B, a seventeen car freight train whose 65 year-old engineer, and 32 year-old conductor, are gravely injured. The only new information that I learned from the report, information which I�m sure was there for everyone to see, was that the fire crews had to cut through the rubber mounting on the window to get into the cab to pull the crew out to safety. The fire, which I always wondered about, was started, of course, in the vicinity of the fuel tank of the Metrolink locomotive which had detached in the initial striking of the two trains. But I think for me the ephiphany occurs at the filling out of the details of the Metrolink engineer�s height and weight. These are simple things, but what you might call the missing link. Suddenly, I could understand the connection I had to this entire accident. Perhaps it all started with the sandwich order placed on that day, the one with no tomato, and progressed to his treatment of the media, but then the addition of the weight, 254 pounds, somehow helped fill out the picture I had in my head. Suddenly I saw this person as a living, breathing human been with proportions, and I knew it wasn�t the locomotive so much that drew me, it was, the thing that has always drawn me, the story. It was the story of the engineer, which in turn led to the story of the machines, which led to the last two and a half years with all their intelligence and drama. There it is: the chatsworth ephiphany, leading, as it were to my favorite bell. It is all a part of the discovery o the human part of railroading, the part that some insist is disappearing. I think, and I think you probably know, that it�s all about the human part of the railroad for me. And the locomotives are cool, too, especially when operated by my number 1 engineer, who, I hope, even now as I write on this swelteringly hot day, rings my favorite bell. ��You�re back,� says 606 Cary, looking down at me from the cab of his locomotive, on Monday March 21. I explain all my adventures and he asks if I have any physical therapy. No, I say, I�m working with my shoulder, I�ve been through all this before, and then he is off. The 608 pulls majestically to its stop, its engineer silent, because tonight, he is an extra. Or it might be a woman. I do not know. I haven�t been back for two weeks now because of getting work from Cal State Fullerton, so I don�t� know if bobby was on vacation or just gone. Maybe he was bumped. When I rinally get back to the station, an event which will probably happen in two more weeks, I will ask my 606 who is on the 608. Schedules change on May 9 but I don�t� know if engineers change. In the meantime, while I wait to find out, I learn more stories and it is the story of the oil delivery man who delivers 55 gallon drums of fuel to doctors an such that entertains the faithful tonight. Larry the man who worked for the oil companies, tells us that people who might be considered upper class were just slightly dismayed when they learned that the oil companies could no longer deliver fifty-five gallon drums of fuel to their homes, due to fuel shortage and whatever other bureaucratic reasons there were in the days of the first energy crises. Go to the back door, sir, announces the butler, that�s where you�ll find the doctor. You can lift the barrel onto the stand after you remove the first one, says the Mercedes owner imperiously. But I have no drum, says the executive to be, relishing in the dismay of the man who is used to getting his way. I�ll call someone else, he insists. No you won�t, announces the delivery man with confidence. No one else will deliver the fuel to you. And so it goes. Stories about trains and engineers, sprint candy bars, stories from long ago written in these pages, all dot the memories, the platform, the trains, the past, the presence, and the future. Everyone here from the ticket agent to the homeless man drinking forty ounces to the retired oil executive, and even the engineer chaser, has a story. Even the engineers have a story and it was the story that drew me here, the story that drove my curiosity. Now a veteran of the platform, still not able to get all the engineer�s attention, I am still in search of the story. On this night, March 21, a boy cries inconsolably having gone with his parents to see someone off on a trip. Bruce talks to a conductor who has just returned from vacation, Shirley tells us she just returned from her own story in Louisiana where she made a surprise trip for a cousin�s birthday party. Tonight it seems, as perhaps has been the case for the last two years, and even the discovering of the Harvey Girls and the museum, it is all about the story. One story intrigues me: the one who operates a train to Lancaster even now, his story intersects mine right where I met it on September 11, 2009, and now, he makes me smile, because he rings my favorite bell. My Chatsworth ephiphany, my shoulder injury, fatalities, and stories, they are all part of the adventure and I can�t wait to get back to see what the next one will be.
Copyright © 2011 Shelley J Alongi |