She Likes Trains: Lancaster Nightcap
Shelley J Alongi

 

“He sounds deadly serious.”

“He has to be,” says the forty year veteran train watcher, the one who saw me inconsolable on the platform in 2010, and who lends a hand to the teasing when they do tease me about talking to him.

“He has to be,” he says. “He’s got his priorities straight.”

Yes, he does. He deals with me. He shows up for work when he might be tempted not to. He tells me a story about working six days after taking a harrowing vacation and being “wore out” “beat” the day after, and shows up anyway. Yes, he has his priorities straight when it comes to his job. I admire him for this. And, you knew that. Nothing new there.

The evening ends when I catch the transmissions of mechanical or whoever helps him spot the train. He’s ready, he says. Ok, 221, car counting, and then 5 4 3 2 1 good spot 221._ it’s my signal. And, sometimes it isn’t. If I wait patiently, if there is cause to, I hear him say he understands all blue flags have been removed and whatever else happens, and then the famous ending, perhaps the one he told me that first time he talked to me out of the cab. Have A Good night.

Dispatch, Glenn says, tells him he doesn’t put his microphone close enough to his lips. My engineer mic shy?
No matter, dear. I can hear you just fine. He always gets his point across. In a profession as dependent on procedure as his, that’s what matters.

There is a new ritual in my railroad journey, one that I would have never imagined on April 16 2010 when Glenn ran 708 for the last time before embarking on a new route that led to Lancaster. Sitting on the east end of the platform inconsolable, persisting through the next months of separation and the phone calls and my own analysis, learning, and missing this bivrant personality though I never lost it, I never imagined modern technology and a full time job would have me adding to my knowledge by a simple ritual.

When I first arrived at the Fullerton station with one goal in mind, to meet engineers, oh, and make new friends, I never thought it would lead to this. Persistence? Patience? What is it exactly? What is this all important ritual?

Until I got my iPHone it wouldn’t have happened, I don’t think. Sure, I could tune in railroadradios.net on my desktop or lap top, but the iPhone is so much more convenient. Sitting at the large, inviting octagonal dining table in a swivel-backed, comfortable padded chair with arms, my iPhone before me on a white window pane place mat from the Pampered Chef, a glass of milk or lemonade, or diet Cocacola or water before me, anything that symbolizes tranquility and domestic bliss, I listen. This hallowed hour, full of promise, occurs between 9:00 and 10:00 pm. And, lately, it seems I make it home just in time to put away my keys and my bag, get comfortable, and settle in for the ceremonial end of my day. Sometimes, the dish washer runs in the background. KUSC our local classical station plays softly on the radio in the kitchen. Most of the time, silence blankets both inside and out, comforting, reassuring, almost welcoming me to this place. Punctuating the silence are intermittent transmissions from Lancaster and ojave, Valley Sub, UP dispatch 54, engineers, mechanical, sometimes unknown voices that seem to have nothing to do with the railroad. This is my hour of second childhood. Here, in the middle of all the traffic and clutter, sometimes silence, and sometimes annoying statick, I catch the serious, fresh vocal quality from Glenn’s transmissions from Metrolink 221.

I call this the Lancaster Night Cap. Lancaster Night Cap. It puts me to bed. Sings me to sleep. I didn’t think that on October 30 when I met glenn for the first timeout of the cab on 607 that I would be sitting here four years later listening to him repeat the same signals every night. But, it is comfort. He sounds experienced and wise and comforting. He sounds deadly serious, and yet, different, too. Is it observed through the eyes of a serious railroad crush or fascination? Maybe. Maybe not. God knows I listen to plenty of traffic on the railroad radios and no one sounds quite like him Sometimes a jocular flavor makes its way through the air, sometimes serious, quiet, Sometimes I listen to the Orange county traffic or the Los Angeles traffic. Sometimes I recognize my engineers, only by their numbers, and sometimes I get questions answered about who is running what train. Oh, 609 that once was run by Bobby, the stock broker engineer, is now run by a woman. It could be, at any time, changed, of course. Oh, I don’t recognize this one on 608. 608 has become the repository for extras, new engineers. There are a bunch of new engineers being trained, now, says James on 642.

“who’s on 608?” I ask once as James gets out of his cab, heading to dinner, and stops to talk to me as I sit on the bench just shy of the fence that keeps the unwary person from sliping off the elevated platform to the street below.

“Brent. He’s new. He probably won’t talk to you. He’s focused on what he’s doing.”

That could be the case, though certainly I hope all my engineers are focused on what they are doing. James is the one who blows the horn on the cab car as he comes into the station one time as I stand by the fence just looking out over the traffic on Lemon. He certainly is focused on what he is doing. Hopefully, it is the same with these guys.

On a different day, another engineer plies his magic on 608, Marvin, a man I met once when he was in training.

“bobby says he has attitude,” I tell James once when he tells me about him. You won’t know him, he says. I know him. Now, standing by the cab, the auxiliary power unit humming, keeping the lights on in the car, now says about Marvin having attitude, “a little bit.” Professional railroader, don’t belittle your colleagues, I suppose. Glenn, even at his most energetic complaining never does that. James doesn’t do it, either. Hoefully, Marvin, just like the others, does his best. Once, when Glenn tells me he trains student engineers, I text to him make them the best.

If I’m lucky, in the morning, not during the night cap, I hear 205 and 214 call signals. 205 and 214 are the trains that hold the student engineers. Once, it seems as if Barbara on Valley Sub, the dispatcher controlling the Metrolink trains is confused about the different voice calling the signals.

“There are two engineers on here,” Glenn says on the radio. Wonder why she didn’t know? Who am I to say. It seems, however, that the next time I hear this train, I think it was 205, there is no confusion. There is just the young voices calling out the signals, sometimes dropping the ends of sentences. What was he protecting exactly?

I didn’t always do this. I remember getting on 607 on October 30, 2009, sitting in the cab car with Glenn and Richard. I see Richard on occasion now. He is the conductor on 642. Sometimes, sitting on the platform at about 9:50 PM, at the station, his voice drifts over the tracks, informing us that the train will be boarding, or earlier when they leave at 7:45 PM, informing us that the train will be leaving. Doors are closing, he says, the standard script for Metrolink conductors, it seems.

Since I go sit by the engine these days when the Laguna train comes in, my place of supreme comfort for some complicated, simple reason, I don’t talk to Richard much. I did talk to him a few months back. He is a twenty year veteran of the railroad, with Amtrak all that time, he says. The first time I saw him he was on a frantic 608, and I was afraid of missing Fullerton. I had caught that train from Los Angeles to Fullerton. That event occurred on September 11, 2009, the day I learned Glenn’s name, and my rather eventful trip to Chatsworth to lay flowers. You can read about it in Flowers for an Engineer. On October 30, 2009, six weeks later, I sat in the cab car listening to signals. You can read about my journey to this moment in my rr journal.

“I want to hear Glenn call signals,” I explained to Richard.

“Well, you just heard him call one right now,” he said. I was new to the whole railroad experience at the time. I hadn’t ever heard him call signals before. Apparently I remembered something from that trip because I identify one of his vocal qualities in my journal as the signal calling voice. If memory serves and I didn’t write this down, I heard him say something was diverging clear. It might have been around Hobart yard. I must have heard him say that because diverging clear became one of my watch words.

The point is here that I had heard him once. How did I know then that I would be tuning in the Lancaster feed to hear him every night? Unfamiliar with the signal charts on the Antelope Valley line, I cannot say if diverging clear is part of the vocabulary used, but it must be, somewhere. I don’t hear him say that. And, I only get to listen for about seven signals if conditions are right. I’m always hoping they are right.

I catch him in the morning on Mondays and Tuesdays, if I’m not sleeping. I usually catch him when I’m typing, but, lately, in the last three weeks, I haven’t had any typing work and so I’ve heard him more often. Sometimes, if I’m going to bed late on Sunday or Monday, I leave the TuneIn radio on the iPhone during the night. I’ll wake up for train 204 or206 and then catch 208 even if it is in some state of semiconsciousness.
It doesn’t matter how I catch it most days. It is my second childhood. It is my middle age fling. And, why not? The airplanes didn’t d this to me. No one has stuck around so long. I haven’t spent four years in anything except the Holocaust or trains. I’ve always been fascinated by how train crews do their work. I have found a way to learn and listen and know how they do things. While waiting for 221 I get to hear a variety of things that make me wonder and teach me. I hear one of the dispatchers, not sure if she’s in a bad mood, joking, or if this is normal for her. Sometimes their exchanges carry an unprofessional tent to them. One such exchange finds her admonishing the crews to move that train. I’ve seen you move those train before, so move it! We can’t, for some reason. We’re getting hungry. Where did you go? Soemwhere, I don’t remember now. No, is the response. We went to PopEye’s chicken. Ok, this isn’t about the railroad, and maybe it is.

Glenn in these exchanges, calling 57, Harold, 69 65 71 73 Sierra Bonita, makes no pretense toward jocularity. In fact, at one time, I heard a sigh that was definitely his make its way over the air waves. My mother used to tell me that I could pick up on people’s vocal sounds. I don’t know. I only know he’s different.

“I figured out what’s different when he’s on the radio,” I tell Dave, sitting on the platform.

“What?”

He seems interested.

We sit on a cool September evening, far away from the heat wave that leaves nights at the train station warm, and entertaining. Valerie wearing skirts and her particular scents and actionss, everyone making commens about someone apparently having a nightcap of their own on the platform, or the state of the now shut down US. Government who can’t pay its bills or anyone else’s, is listening.

“He sounds deadly serious.”

“He has to be,” says the forty year veteran train watcher, the one who saw me inconsolable on the platform in 2010, and who lends a hand to the teasing when they do tease me about talking to him.

“He has to be,” he says. “He’s got his priorities straight.”

Yes, he does. He deals with me. He shows up for work when he might be tempted not to. He tells me a story about working six days after taking a harrowing vacation and being “wore out” “beat” the day after the six day working stint, and shows up anyway. Yes, he has his priorities straight when it comes to his job. I admire him for this. And, you knew that. Nothing new there.

The evening ends when I catch the transmissions of mechanical or whoever helps him spot the train. He’s ready, he says. Ok, 221, car counting, and then 5 4 3 2 1 good spot 221._ it’s my signal. And, sometimes it isn’t. If I wait patiently, if there is cause to, I hear him say he understands all blue flags have been removed and whatever else happens, and then the famous ending, perhaps the one he told me that first time he talked to me out of the cab. Have A Good night.

You, too. Have a Good Night, 221.

Dispatch, Glenn says, tells him he doesn’t put his microphone close enough to his lips. My engineer mic shy?
No matter, dear. I can hear you just fine. He always gets his point across. In a profession as dependent on procedure as his, that’s what matters.

 

 

Copyright © 2013 Shelley J Alongi
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"