She Likes Trains: Missing The Train Meet
Shelley J Alongi

 

About 10:00 pm we all decide it’s time to leave the trains to themselves. My phone battery has died and so kathy lets me borrow hers to call a cab. I am home by 10:30 and very tired. It has by all accounts been an exhausting week. It has been a good week, too; a lucky engineer, a new bus pass, the mystery bike, a new dog for the station faithful, and always the engineers who wish me happy birthday and have stolen my heart. It doesn’t get much better than this, but I bet it will.

Bike for Sale

On this balmy pleasant evening, Monday January 17, not too warm, not too cold, with the breeze dying down and the station silent, Amtrak Pacific Surf liner number 589 not having arrived yet and Amtrak Southwest Chief otherwise known as 4 just having left us Curt informs me sitting on the planter, Dave Norris and Dave Keller there, too, perhaps Valerie is sitting by the door with Agosto, who knows now, that there is a bike; a bicycle with a loose seat secured by a chain that has been put off by the conductor on 785. Does Steve, a big man behind us who appears on occasion here, want to buy it? Steve has a reciprocal offer for Curt.
"I'm offering it to you," says Steve, for sale, of course, when he learns that no one will take the thing. It seems that not even the ticket agent wants this. Why should they be responsible for anything else? They have to deal with tickets and passengers and bags, especially when one leaves a bag unattended on the platform. A woman tows two children and her bag, a blue one, that has been left on the platform and called to the attention of anyone listening. I don’t' know what ultimately happens to the bike, I'll have to ask Curt, but this evening, it is for sale to the buyer, broken and all. We do not know who's bike it is. All we know is that the conductor handed the bike down the stairs from one of the coaches and now here it sits, just waiting for someone to rescue it.

Happy Birthday from the Engineer

But before the bike incident occurs, I arrive early at the station, and sit in the cafe, Coast blaring its usual play list. Journey implores us not to stop believing as Miguel cleans the grill and a man and his son roll their backpacks through the cafe. A woman looks at the prices of the Crystal Lite single packages. Who would buy Crystal Lite for a water bottle at $1.75 per package? Not me. But tonight I'll spend $5.25 for a cheeseburger and maybe throw in a couple of Diet Pepsis. Sometimes it's nice just to come here and relax, witness the passing of the freights from inside this place of glass and steel, a place Cary wants me to go to get warm and the place where I call Glenn for the first time a year ago on January 1. This week is adventurous, I don’t' know it yet, so I sit and text Glenn the following message on my new phone as Steve Parry croons and somebody pushes someone else's love over the borderline. "Finally an early day. Lovely trains. Enjoy the week." How am I to know that he is indeed enjoying his week. He is, as luck would have it, far away from where his train hits someone on Tuesday night, causing me distress, tears and sweet, gentle relief when I find out that he is far out of harm's way. Maybe he is in harms' way in some other way? I don't know much about that.

I sit at my table with my red and black backpack on the floor, my Mickey headed bag and my phone laid out on the table before me. It’s funny but a year ago when I spoke with Glenn for the very first time I wondered if he was attached to his phone. Now I know I’m attached to mine. It hardly leaves my sight, always within easy reach, and always informative. I do enjoy texting. It is better now that it's on the phone, the computer version just interrupts my work. The phone version of texting now that I've upgraded to it is fulfilling. I can just leave a message whenever and get a response whenever. Honestly I don't have that many people that text me. The only regular text messages I get are from the Metrolink train feed on Twitter and this week it is active. You can read all about my conversation with Glenn about the Antelope Valley line 221 fatality that occurs on Tuesday January 18. Two days later a Union Pacific freight train hits a woman in her car on the railroad tracks around the same area where the accident happens on Tuesday. Cleanup causes Metrolink trains to be delayed all day, until after train 214 finishes its run. Trains 205 and 214 are two of Glenn’s trains. He is not here running them this week. Maybe he should take another week off? I don’t’ know. The advantage to having my new phone is that I can see what time the messages got to my phone and know exactly who they are from without having to guess from the context of the message. I like it. I sit here on Monday, though, kind of in a dreamy mood, wondering how
Glenn my engineer is doing, wondering, sometimes, if I overwhelm him. Judging from our conversations this week I don’t’ think I’m overwhelming him at all. I think I have a cool friend who runs the train who has a lot of stories to tell and is happy to share them, who is a very nice guy, and who gives what he can when he can. On top of all that, this week, he is a sweet, lucky engineer. I’ll take him.

But tonight, Monday, I am here early because it is a holiday, we are slow, and I put my name on the early release list and leave the travel company two hours early. I’m about to meet another engineer, too, one whose name resides somewhere in these many pages. Till then I eat my cheeseburger and talk to Bob on occasion. He sits and watches as freights fly down the tracks. The station hums along at its usual rhythm. Miguel works on the cheeseburger. By the end of the week he is replaced by Wendy, who is a good cook in her own right, it doesn’t take much to make a grilled cheeseburger, but the people who frequent the café prefer Miguel. I’m sure we’ll see him again sometime, especially if I ever get a chance to make it for breakfast there again. I’m about to put in a request to change my hours at work to morning hours, out by 5:00 so maybe I’m becoming a normal individual with normal hours? I think I just want to be done with my work so I can go enjoy my trains or do other things. But today I am here, getting off early, and about to go meet train 606.

I make my way out over the bridge and line up for my spot, waiting for the engineer to arrive, to spot the train. The usual hubbub goes on around me, people wait for the late Amtrak 785, and now 606 pulls in. I walk up to the locomotive and wave. NO response. I wave again and look to my left.

“I’m over here!” says the engineer.

“Oh!” Somehow I keep missing the window these days, not sure why, but today I go over there.

“Hi! My name is Shelley and I like to talk to the engineer,” I explain, halting the question about whether I need the train or not. He doesn’t seem like he’s going to ask it, but I do like to explain myself to the engineers.

“Oh!” is the usual engineer response and this one is no exception.

“What’s your name?”

Ok so am I getting good at this? Am I someday going to be in a room full of locomotive engineers all of whom have given me their names? I remember once in a conversation with Glenn, my second one, one I never admitted to, when I couldn’t hear what he said, that I asked him his name, knowing good and well who it was.

“Glenn!” he said just before he took 608 out of the station after being delayed by a freight. This happened during our second vocal exchange, the day that I finally realized what he said when I got across the bridge. So you see, I’ve even asked my number one engineer his name, even if I do know it. When I worked at Cal state selling coffee and doughnuts I used to ask the customers their names. Now I stand here at the six car marker, that sweet engine purring, asking this engineer his name.

“Chad!” he says.

“Chad Skinner?”


Recognition dawns.

“Yeah.”

“I was on your train on my birthday,” I explain.

“When is your birthday?”

“July.”

“happy birthday!” he says cheerfully.

“Thank you. That was a while ago.”

“But it will be here soon enough; right around the corner,” says the extra.

“You are an extra. You work the weekends. Steve on 607 told me.”

He acknowledges all this. The echo of the conductor’s voice comes to him on the radio and I wave.


”See you next time!” I say. It seems since Glenn has left that I meet all kinds of engineers because these guys take time off. Maybe the next engineer I meet will be named Harvey. Glenn took time off to help him move, he says to me this week, so maybe if I get my schedule readjusted, I’ll get to meet him. The next time I talk to Glenn I’ll have to ask him what train Harvey runs, if he knows. I’ll probably see Chad again, but I’ve seen him today, and now I know who my birthday engineer was. He seems like a very cheerful man, probably mid forties or fifties, and he wished me a happy birthday! Glenn didn’t’ do that, but, as you might remember from reading another essay called “Number One Engineer” Glenn was my Christmas present for 2009. what a nice present. But now I can put another name in my engineer book.

I cross the bridge and make my way to the café.

“Are you going to give up on the last train?” It’s Dave Norris and he’s by the café patio gate. Eventually we make it out to the planter where the bike conversation occurs.

“No,” I say now, flushed, happy. “I just met an engineer whose train I was on for my birthday and he said happy birthday!” I explain that I usually come back across the bridge between trains and then I think I go inside and order two more diet sodas. Yes I am back to ordering sodas there now. During the next week it looks like I will make the station more often so I’m stocking up on sodas and food, but for this week, the one I’m talking about, I’m still in the habit of buying two or three sodas at the café and tucking them into my red and black bag.

Now, Bobby pulls the train to its 6 car marker, that bell sweetly welcoming me, even if Glenn has left to ply his magic elsewhere, the bell still comforts me, the engine soothes my interest in these machines and their men, and the stock broker engineer with the gold rimmed glasses looks out his window.

“Hey, Shelley.”

This is Bobby’s standard greeting. “Hey Shelley” or “Hey, or hi” replaces the gruff cadence of “what’s up!” Glenn who had his kids in the 1980s, bearded and mustached, fan of the Rolling Stones, engineer of the seventies, someday he might use the word “groovy” is replaced by the Yuppie, polite engineer with two girls, 11 and 8 years old, Tory and Ariana, he says, later. This week is all about learning the story of the engineer on the 608, only a year after meeting him, when Glenn abandons me for the Almighty greenback and misses fatality number 8. Bobby is my friend; Glenn is my love. Bobby might be on marriage number two, I know he took time off to get married, this was April or May I have to ask him again or look it up, maybe it was September.

“Where were you on Friday?” I scold my engineer. He says something which is lost in the purr of the FP59, it’s the usual ground to cab problem, the reason I’m sure hand signals were invented.

The engineer gets his signal now and I’m dismissed, he carries his load down to Ocean Side. It has been a good day in the engineer department, even if Cary has taken a day off, according to Chad his cheerful extra. I turn and walk parallel to bobby’s moving train, line up with my spot for the bridge and make my way across the tracks.

This is my usual routine, right after 608 pulls out of Fullerton I go over to the east end of the platform and find my spot with the other railfans. I perch, Dave Norris says, later on. I sit on a wall that is probably three feet high, my back pressed into the wrought iron slats that forms the cage where the cars used to be worked on. Now it is a tempting place to throw orange peels and other things, littering, I guess you would call it. It’s a good thing to do hanging with these guys, watching for freights, observing as they come through and listening to the metal clicking as they switch onto the next track that will take them to the spot before they reach their destinations. The Monday evening passes uneventfully, leading to Tuesday, where the accident happens on Glenn’s line, leading to Wednesday which is its own day.

By the time I reach the station on Wednesday I am no longer hungry, my emotional state is much better. It has been an emotional day, wondering if Glenn my number one engineer is okay after the fatality on Antelope Valley line train 221 around 8:00 on Tuesday. By the time bus 47 lets me off at dock 4 I know that Glenn is okay, he wasn’t on the train, that he is being nice enough to help someone move, and I am ready to tell the station faithful my news. Janice is working, Curt shows up on the bike, he says that the bike from 785 is still here, Valerie isn’t anywhere to be seen today. The weather is quiet; no rain, no wind, the sun has set on another day at the Fullerton station, the lights go on casting their iridescent shadows across the empty tracks. No worries, trains will be here, 7737, 7733, locomotives that appear a lot through here. I don’t’ even ask the Metrolink engineers their numbers anymore. They’re all beautiful, dirty, sweet machines, except the clattering Miss, of course. Tonight there is no cheeseburger, of course, but I am ready for a relaxing day. I’ve cried, I’ve lost sleep, I’m exhausted, I’m ready to relax. I have the dubious distinction of caring whether an engineer who has forty years experience is fine after a train he runs hits a nineteen-year-old man on the tracks. He isn’t there, but I don’t’ know that till I call and now with this huge load off my mind, I am finally ready to enjoy my trains, and my engineers.

I do have a mission of sorts tonight. I haven’t seen Cary in two or three weeks and one of the things he tells me is that he wants to be a toastmaster. I want to invite him to a speech I will give, not sure when that will be, but I also want to get some contact information if he’ll give it to me so that if I don’t see him for a while I can invite him. It’s interesting the different engineers I talk to; some of them I want to talk to and some of them I don’t. Cary isn’t one that I’ve especially wanted to contact, but I would like to help with the Toastmasters and so if I can I will. I stand now looking at his train, he greets me with his usual “hey.”

I ask him about the speech, he says next time he sees me he’ll get my number, but I don’t see how that will help. I gave him my number a few months back through Janice when I needed someone to help me with my speech that I gave in August. Glenn helped me with that speech and Cary had forgotten he was going to help me. Glenn’s information was enough. I really did meet the best, first, and yet they’re all great in their own ways. Glenn is just friendly and gives me information, willing to share, willing to take time out of his schedule. It’s interesting that I haven’t really talked to anyone else about trains. Cary asks me “what the good word is” and says “what’s new.” This is when I Ask him about getting contact information.

“I’m not promising anything,” he says. In this regard he an glen are different. Cary just says from the beginning that he doesn’t make any promises. Glenn doesn’t say anything one way or the other about meeting me for coffee in L.A. I guess there is a difference between being invited to a speech and just asking for coffee. Yet Glenn is so much more willing to share information or maybe it was just a connection I made. Glenn was just the engineer I was supposed to me the first time. No matter, two different relationships, two different men, two different stories, experiences, and all one love, the train. The train unites all of us along our walks of life. It’s okay if Cary doesn’t want to give me information. Somehow I will get him involved with Toastmasters. I have planted a seed, seeds take time to grow. Look what my meeting one engineer has produced. If I’m just patient I can get the other one to respond. I have as much time as God gives me. I know my journey into meeting engineers and learning about trains is not over by any means.

Cary 606 gets the highball and he is out of there. He pulls away and I go across the tracks. I don’t’ remember anything particularly different about the station, Dan is here, Bob, we all sit outside because the weather has warmed up so that we can take our spots out on the patio. This might be the day that the man who is taking number 4 shows up, asking a bunch of questions. Which track does the train come on? Where does he get the train? I guess I’m the one who stops him. Now he has the attention of the group and we answer his questions. He’s from the Midwest he says. It has been a while since I talked to someone taking number 4 to any destination. This is a very interesting place to meet people, some of them talk and some don’t.

Earlier I stand by the bridge and another man comes up to me asking a bunch of questions. He seems like he needs the Train and then he asks different questions. He gets the attention of matt, one of the guys who stands on the bridge and goes to different spots on the platform looking for the best angles to shoot photographs. We talk to the man for a wile. He just walks up and asks questions, no inhibitions, he doesn’t wonder if we’ll respond or not, he just asks questions. It’s funny rightnow I can’t think of a single thing we talked to himabout, but he was there. He calls me “sweetie” a few times, and then he disappears. By the time he moves along in his own world it is time for me to get to track 3 again.

“Nice talking to you,” Matt says. I wave and disappear across the bridge.

“Guess what happened last night?”

I’m standing by Bobby’s cab, my hand almost on the window. He looks right at me.

“What happened last night?”

Wonder if he’s talking to one of his little daughters. Wonder if Glenn remembers when his kids were that small. Bobby now looks out the window, interested.

“Train 221 hit someone near Sylmar. That’s Glenn’s train but he wasn’t on it.”

“Yeah,” he says. He knows about the accident.

“Glenn was on vacation. He wasn’t on the train.”

“how do you know what train Glenn is on?”

Bobby always seems surprised when I tell him something; the one time I told him that he was late due to speed restrictions I told him I had gotten the update from Twitter.

“He told me. I have his number,” I say.

“You guys haven’t hit anyone for a while, knock on wood,” I tell him.

“Close calls,” he says. “There have been a lot of accidens.”

“People are just being stupid.”

“People are stupid,” he says to me, animatedly, looking directly at me.

I fully agree.

The conversation ends now, bobby gets the highball, and he is off to ocean Side, about to switch onto the orange subdivision. Wonder if he thinks there’s something between me and Glenn? There is something between me and Glenn! A year and three months of getting information from a very nice man who runs the train who sometimes sounds like he’s a little annoyed, and sometimes sounds like he’s talking to his daughter, and sometimes sounds kind and forgiving, very gentle, interested, sometimes in a hurry, and always friendly. My sweet magical Glenn, He’s still the best.

And yet these other guys are shaping up nicely, too. Friday is when I learn Bobby’s kids names.

“What’s the word?” Cary says on Friday to me.

“Oh, I just got yelled at today,” I say. “But it’s all good.”

“Well I don’t’ want to get personal so I won’t ask,” says the 606 engineer.

Now is that an invitation to tell or what?

“Oh I just got yelled at by people at work,” I say. “But it’s all good.”

These guys are shaping up nicely because they’re friendly, they know my name, and they run the train. I learn the names of Bobby’s kids and Cary doesn’t want to get personal. I think with a job like these guys have it would be easy to respond to someone who pays so much attention to them. I can see how people can get themselves into situations where they feel trapped; maybe they might feel attracted to someone who comes to their train, but it’s all part of humanness, people like trains, people like people who run trains, and people who run trains are friendly. The engineers that talk to me don’t seem to fall into the category of the introvert, the category of people Glenn says Amtrak is looking for. My me n of the railroad don’t seem to be introverts. Maybe I’m not one either. I’m the one who wants to go meet the engineers. I cant’ just sit on the platform and watch the trains and listen to the railfans talk about politics. I need go to people. I need people who can answer questions and not just show pictures. Everything has its place in the world of the rails. My place is at the side of the cabs learning the stories of the engineers. This has been my place since an engineer who was texting missed a signal and slammed head on into a Union Pacific freight train. It is my happy place. I am about to ask my job to switch my hours so I can get off earlier. Maybe I’ll be able now to meet more of the engineers and maybe I’ll meet Harvy.


“Do you have room for 22 cats?”

“No!” dave Norris ejaculates. There must be five or six people sitting here tonight, and of course the admission of someone having 22 cats causes a peek in curiosity.

“I talked to my engineer today.”

I tell the story. Everyone wants to kno about an accident.

“Well,” I say, “there’s bad news and good news.”

This peaks interest.

“The bad news is that train 221 hit a guy near Sylmar. The good news is my engineer was on vacation, not running his train.”

Dave is surprised that there’s no drug test for anyone who hits a person, only for someone who hits a train. Glenn tells me this on Wednesday.

“I thought they’d use any excuse,” Dave said.
 
we all commisurate and then for some reason the conversation turns hilarious. Mikey who I havent’ seen here in a while, shows up. I don’t’ even remember what we talked about. They weren’t teasing me about talking to engineers, we were all just talking about everything that had to do with trains and it all suddenly became funny. I was ready to shed tears for laughter and by the time I leave that night I am in much better spirits. The weather is good, my engineer is okay, and I’ve found my bus pass. Yes that’s the other traumatic event that occurs this week. The same day that train 221 hits the guy in Sylmar I somehow lose my bus pass and take that day off to go replace it. By the time I get to the station on Wednesday I’ve replaced the pass and talked to my engineer, so everything after that must have just taken on a euphoric state. The other thing that takes up their time is trying to untwist a strap on my new Disney bag. Somehow it doesn’t get untwisted and it isn’t for a lack of trying. Everyone tries with no success. Just when we think we’ve gotten it figured out the strap defies us.

“Is your strap still twisted?” Dave asks as I get up to leave.

Somehow the way everything has gotten turnd into something funny tonight this exchangefalls into that category. It sounds kind of weird when he says it that way. Yes, it’s still twisted and even at this writing it is.

“Say hi to Jeff,” Mikey says, mentioning that he doesn’t remember the name of the person who takes me up to L.A.

I’m not sure what he’s talking about.

“She doesn’t soil herself with conductors,” dave Norris says, “only engineers.”

Yes and I think on that note I really do have to leave to catch my bus so I can get home before midnight. Soil myself with conductors? No, but the engineers have stolen my hart.

There are two more events of note to mention in this ever growing tale of adventure this week. It is the return of the Frog Lady, that’s right, Mo Miller. I asked ‘glenn in December if he had seen her and he said no. Now I’ve seen her.

“You look so different,” someone says. She had a masdectomy and I don’t know about any other physical characteristics. She was calm. I exchanged words with her a few times, especially when a man and she and I talked about cell phone plans and an Orange County Internet company that is expanding. She couldn’t remember the name of the company. She spends much of her time talking to one group and I talk to another group. She mentions getting healthy and that’s about all I can remember. The thing I do remember is that since that incident in march I haven’t trusted her. I guess I still kind of shy away from her, even if she did give me Glenn’s physical description. It is nice to see her again, she has been missing for months. She’s doing well, it seems. That’s always good news.

The last and final adventure of the week for me is the introduction of the new dog to the existing pack. I read somewhere that dogs travel in packs. Engineers, railfans alike seem to love dogs. Maybe it’s just because we’re all human and aws automated as we want to make the railroad, there is still the human elemen and aninals serve to bring us together. Ninja is the train enthusiast. She is a big fourteen year-old black lab with a lot of hip problems nows that she’s gotten older. Jezebel or Dog Dog is the fox terrier with the short ttail, the one who cannot stand anything with wheels. She has a piercing bark, one tht interrupts conversation. She needs to be held and coaxed and calmed quite regularly. She absolutely hates trains! And now Tim and Anna have adopted a new dog, a beautiful blck lab about four months old, 25 pounds, who was going to be put down at an Orange Conty animal shelter. She is loved. She makes her way to the gatherin gplace with her masters and is promptly surrounded with love and affection and petting. The other black lab just looks. Okay, she says. You’re not a threat, and you’re definitely not a train! Tim and Anna cant’ decide what to name the dog. Coco is the name for now, and they’re tryingto decide on a name. She is a calm little thing who will get much bigger, of course. She is cute. Even I get to pet her. She tries to eat an orange peel that is on the ground one tht I’ve left there in my latest littering frenzy. She loves the attention. She has found a new home.

About 10:00 pm we all decide it’s time to leave the trains to themselves. My phone battery has died and so kathy lets me borrow hers to call a cab. I am home by 10:30 and very tired. It has by all accounts been an exhausting week. It has been a good week, too; a lucky engineer, a new bus pass, the mystery bike, a new dog for the station faithful, and always the engineers who wish me happy birthday and who have stolen my heart. It doesn’t get much better than that. But I bet it will.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Shelley J Alongi
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"