Metrolink111: Finding The Gold Nuggetts Train Meet The morning gets off to a rocky start only because somehow I’ve awakened with a lot to do and it seems not very much time to do it. I don’t oversleep, instead I spend the morning going over my story with Glen as the railroad engineer, not Metrolink Glen, someone else, Glen Streicher, my creation based on the Chatsworth engineer Robert Sanchez, though I’m sure it is not nor is it expected to be an exact replica, nor would I want it to be. It seems I need to make an emergency trip to the bank for a cashier’s check since the rent check was returned, a long story, but it got covered and that’s what’s important. I shower, skip breakfast, make sure the cats have food and decide after contemplating the situation to bring the laptop with me. I’m carrying the bright yellow bag with my book and other essentials and the laptop today on another trip out to Ventura County, Simi Valley to be exact, then a two hour lay over before I talk to Gary again hopefully, and then go back to Fullerton on Metrolink train 608. I manage to get the check, print a note to Glen the Metrolink engineer, go drop off the check on a one minute whistle stop at the rental office, and get to the station in time to eat breakfast and breathe before getting to the station. I even have time at the station to get my first Metrolink ticket from Chatsworth to Simi Valley and to have a nice breakfast with time to spare. When the train pulls in I walk too far to the back, looking out over track, figuring out that this is the back of the last car. Interesting. I’m sure it’s interesting but it doesn’t look too exciting. Wish I had time to explore. Instead I walk back to the car opening and meet Cathleen and Jim and get on the train. Cathleen wants to put me next to Grace but no, I say, I need a plug for my laptop. No car attendant is going to dictate where I sit unless I don’t have any particular need for a laptop plug. I get seated, Cathleen is much too attentive, somehow I manage to extricate myself from her helpfulness. Notes from the Rails 11:36 AM Now I’m on the train in business class as usual, though the service doesn’t seem to be very good on this particular day. The attendant Cathleen said we didn’t have any diet soda, she offered to give me one of her’s an dif I wanted to give her a tip that would be nice but the person who asks me for one is the one who doesn’t get one. She did say we had apple juice or coffee but I didn’t get any, asking for it, she came through and asked if anyone asked for something but she didn’t bring it yet and I haven’t seen her for a few minutes now. Usually the service has been very good. Guess you never know what you’re going to get on the train. It is very noisy in here today this kind of full and we’re about to stop in Los Angeles. Cathleen just appeared to say that the coffee was coming. It’s a busy morning it seems. Today I’m off to Simi Valley then back to Chatsworth and back to L.A. as I said. See you then. I’ll keep you posted. Later When we start again in Los Angeles, the soda appears, and so do the snack packs. These are my big pleasures in life. I must be short on pleasures. No I think it just means that small things please me. Cathleen tells me she hurt her femur bone but she had to come to work anyway because she needed the money. Grace comes to me and says when we get to Simi Valley she’ll get Cathleen to help me. I’ve told her twice that won’t be necessary. Someday you just have to laugh. Like I said earlier, or like Chris said at Noël wood, every train trip is an adventure. That seems to be the case here. Each train trip Is an adventure. The engineer just pulled this train forward maybe too fast it seems, the car kind of clunked against something, how romantic. We’re off from Burbank Airport now, on our way to the Metrolink memorial. Wonder what will happen between here and there. I’ll keep you posted. Visit to a Memorial Finally, we arrive in Simi Valley and I’m here to do what I’ve been wanting to do for a few weeks now. A very nice conductor tells me that the memorial for the accident is at the end of the platform to the left. Indeed it is located only feet from the tracks, a stone bench, a garden-like setting with a winding walkway lined with name markers, and eleven basalt columns. Maria Villalobos, out angel forever says one of them. Ron Grace, teacher, embraced life. I don’t spot the memorial right away, in fact I think that I pass it. Walking through the parking lot, a little hesitant, I wonder just how far I’ve gone from the tracks. There are no trains to guide me when a woman pulls up in her car. She slows down and asks if she can help me. Now here is a situation in which I really do need assistance and the question is greeted with thanks and gratitude. I suppose some people just know how to ask if someone needs assistance rather than just assuming one does. I explain to her that I’m looking for the memorial and she knows exactly what I’m talking about. Getting out of her car, Nancy who happens to be hard of hearing, directs me toward it and proceeds to explain it. She explain the garden-like setting, reads some of the inscriptions. We look for the name Sanchez but we could no find it. The design, according to reports from the April Ventura County Star include twenty-five markers, eleven basalt columns, one for those not from Simi Valley and ten for the ten Simi Valley residents killed in the September 12 crash. Others killed in the crash came from Camarillo, Moorpark, newhall, Santa Paula, and La Crescenta. The markers start at the edge of the concrete and wind through a path on the southeast corner of the station platform. A fence behind the stone benches, is lined with crosses bearing the same names. Included in the memorial are the four who died in the Glendale accident. Gregory Lintner who gets a lot of attention in the press was killed in the Chatsworth crash. He was also in the Glendale crash and it is reported that he carried a picture of the man who parked his truck on the railroad tracks causing that train to derail. It is a good day today for viewing a memorial, if any day is good for such a thing. A gentle breeze, soft sunshine, comfortable temperature make it easy to reflect, remember, plan. A few tears slip silently down my cheeks, but I am calm. More tears appear just before I get off the train in Simi Valley. I’ve passed through this place on all the journeys northward and southward, toward and away from Los Angeles; technically that’s east and westbound traffic. I only spend about half an hour there. I figure I’ll come back later and take pictures, maybe stay longer. I want to find that marker with Rob’s name on it and take pictures for a book. A memory book maybe with my essays in it. Sitting here on the bench perhaps fifty feet from the tracks, I’m calmer than I would have thought possible. I go to the places where people interacted with those who died in order to obtain a stronger connection with them. Those who died sat at this station many times; perhaps they bought Metrolink tickets here. The engineer waited for his signal here. Before metrolink was in existence this very station served the Coast Starlight route and still does. If he operated the train this far he sat here as a much younger engineer. I’ve passed through this station on my trips on the Coast Starlight. I was on a train with my mom once through here in 1977, when Rob Sanchez was still a child, just like me. This is a place where I can bring flowers, even if they are for an engineer who appears by all media accounts to have been reckless and contrary. I’m not convinced he was reckless and contrary though probably he should have received more than a wrist slap for some violations. I’m interested in seeing those violation reports if there are any. Apparently, according to the L.A. Times, whose sources I often take issue with, he was above average in calling signals correctly. I do remember hearing that when listening to the hearings online so I won’t dispute the paper in that regard. Bob Hildendbrndt, the man I met on the September 11 trip apparently did not fail a signal calling test in the last two and a half years. Chris told me the time before this when I was in Chatsworth that Bob has been a conductor with Metrolink, Amtrak, and Southern Pacific when it was around. I guess if you’ve been at it that long you should be able to call signals correctly. That was the assumption on September 12, 2008, that all signals would be called and observed correctly. Apparently, controversy or not, reckless behavior or not, and for whatever reason, failure to call and heed them, human error, safety violations, or even just a railroad’s political or moral failure to upgrade technology, something went wrong and now here we are. I get up and gather my bright yellow bag with black piping, the one that says RAILROAD TRAINS ON THE WEB and head back to the platform to continue my journey. This part is done for now, but you know I’ll be back. I’m already planning to return and I’ll keep you posted. The bell sounds, signaling the approach of metrolink train 109. The Metrolink 109 will drop me off in Chatsworth today. The entire trip I spend in conversation with Rita who worked for fifteen years at the Francis Blend School for the Blind in Los Angeles. On September 12, 2008, she was going to take the Metrolink 111 somewhere but couldn’t because she had to pay the balance on a cruise. I’m not quite sure I understand her reason for not going, maybe she had to pay it that day or had to postpone payment till that day. She escaped riding on the Metrolink111. She tells me there is a cross now at the entrance to the first tunnel after the curve where the two engineers saw each other perhaps five seconds. Did Rob Sanchez see that engineer? It’s interesting we’ve not heard from the freight engineer. I wonder if we will ever hear from him. The NTSB may have heard from him but I haven’t read anything. Perhaps I haven’t dug deeply enough, or he’s just not saying anything. I can still purchase the documents and hearings on a cd from the NTSB. I will do that eventually; maybe I’ll learn more about him. Did he see the Metrolink engineer? Reports indicate that he hit the rakes. I suppose, in my very rudimentary understanding of thins, he could have plugged the train. I think, however, that even this action would not have done any good. Hats off to that freight engineer for trying to hit the brakes. Someday maybe I’ll get to talk to him. At the Front of the Line “Hello Bright Eyes.” I stand at the counter looking up at Chris who has been doing something in the café. “Hello, Shelley. What brings you this way?” As if Chris Castle one of the last people to talk to Robert martin Sanchez has to ask that! But it is a question. I don’t tell him that it’s Rob’s blood, sweat and tears that draws me here. No, instead I tell him that I went to see the Simi Valley accident memorial. The memorial, he says, belongs in Chatsworth. The big cross at the beginning of the tunnel is hardly accessible to anyone. How can people remember the victims? I get the feeling he’s not too happy about that. I think Simi Valley has been especially generous in putting together the memorial, which, by the way, sources indicate metrolink did not fund. Chris doubts that Gary the locomotive engineer who trained Rob on the lien will talk to me about Rob Sanchez. “He wont’ even talk to me,” he says. “Mum’s the word.” “Why?” I want to know, and I’m sure I do know. “Lawsuits. State, federal, county, city,” he says. “I’m used to slamming into brick walls,” I say. Seems I usually pick projects that are hard and unyielding. Someday the tide will turn. An then perhaps by then I’ll keep the plaque because if no one wants it now an suddenly they all want it, well, maybe it should just be her in the first place. But for now I don’t think it should be hanging on my wall, those attractive eyes (Lilian says Rob’s eyes were attractive) looking down at me. It needs to be somewhere where people knew him can respect it. A gay bar? A restaurant? A union hall? It seems, for now, not the Metrolink break room. And definitely not the Chatsworth depot. “Sometimes in digging through the debris,” I say, “You find the gold nugget.” “What are you looking for?” Chris want sot know. “Someone brave enough to take this plaque.” That’s pretty much the extent of the conversation we have about the accident. I don’t know if Gary will talk to me. He hasn’t called the number I left on the note for him two weeks ago. Chris the security guard was supposed to help me get his attention out there but he was in the parking lot for some reason and I was at the wrong end when the train came in so I missed him. But it’s okay. I’m here and I’ve seen the memorial. I always have to come by and say hello to Chris. I’ll be back. On a lighter note I ask Chris how his birthday trip turned out. It was fine. They went to Ventura, shopped, ate, and came home. Chris the security guard will be having a birthday soon. “What are you going to do?” I ask. They are going to have a drink he says. “Chris told me he got you a bottle of Scotch for your birthday,” I say to Chris Castle. “Yes,” he says, and if they go and have a drink on the other Chris’s birthday, “then we’ll both call in sick.” We discuss Obama winning the Nobel Peace prize. None of us are quite sure why he has won this award, it seems there are many out there, and not only his detractors, who feel the same way. However, our discussion is not political. “Is there a Nobel prize for causing trouble?” I want to know “Because if there is, I’m getting in that line.” Then Chris Castle the man who says the station light was green on September 12, 2008, says something that forever endears him to me. Whatever happens and wherever that plaque ends up, this man will be eternally remembered for pegging my personality on the dot. “At the front of the line?” he asks with all the meaning in the world. Yes, at the front of the line! That’s my spot, holding my plaque of Robert martin Sanchez, it’s 12 x 15 span showing me off as the front of the line. Here it is! Oh and there are other things I can cause trouble about, you know, but for here and for now, when I showed up on the station platform, he figured me out. I will definitely be at the front of the line! “I have other ideas,” I tell him, “about where to put it.” At least I have people I can ask. I want to fin the restaurant owner who was supposed to make that roast beef sandwich with no tomato, light Mayonnaise, and salad dressing. I want to know what kind of salad dressing Rob Sanchez thought he needed on that sandwich. By all accounts they talked politics. I only have a first name and not an address yet. But it’s on my radar screen as a possible location. If not a possible location then perhaps another lead. My other possibility is the BLET Union Hall and my third possibility is a beauty salon owner who posted a nice comment on his memorial page. In the next few weeks as we do over time and I wave at glen the engineer, or whoever else comes down those tracks, but mainly Glen for now, I’ll be planning my next steps. I’ll be, for all intents and purposes, at the front of the line. Strengthening Connections I go outside, the temperature is pleasant in Chatsworth today. The last few times I’ve been here the weather has been hot. Today the nice weather is welcome, especially since I spend a lot of time on my feet. I wander the platform, Chris gives me a general layout of where things are in relation to the tracks. I purchase my metrolink ticket from Chatsworth to Los Angeles. I find Bob talking to a knot of people waiting for a late Amtrak train. It seems that Amtrak has been running a little late today. A boy shows Bob a magazine with animals and explains that the chita is the fastest running cat. The two-toed sloth is the slowest land mammal. A man waits for the train getting him to Grover Beach. That train, we explain, has just passed. On September 12 2008 I didn’t even know where Grover Beach was; today I can tell you whether a station is north or south, and I can spell Amtrak. “Where’s your scanner?” I ask bob. Sometimes he has trouble focusing on people; I don’t’ know if this is deliberate or intentional. After several repetitions of the question he explains that his scanner is at home because someone tried to steel it last week. It’s a good thing they didn’t try to steel it on the day I first appeared at Chatsworth to ask questions. I might still be sitting on that bench eating nectarines and drinking Diet Pepsi. I suppose in some strange way, luck was with me that day. Considering I seem to have hit a dead-end in the memorial plaque department, I’m wondering just how all this will turn out, seeing that I did find so many people with so much information about Rob on that first trip. Oh I’m not discouraged, believe me, I just wonder about things some days. Today it seems is just a day to strengthen connections. “Are you behaving?” Bob asks when he first sees me. He says something to the affect that he’ll make sure I am behaving. Chris the security guard says “Hi Shelley” when he sees me first when I get off the train. He is the one who helps me get my metrolink ticket. Now he disappears and I’m out standing behind bob when the Metrolink 111 appears. The Death of An Engineer I don’t hear what bob says to Mitch, the engineer, but I’m aware later as I think about it that I’m standing right behind bob and Mitch is sitting right where Rob Sanchez would have been sitting on that day. “Have a good weekend,” bob says and the ML111 is off and running. This time the light really is green. I think later of the proximity of myself to the cab, I am standing feet from where Rob Sanchez was sitting. I’m starting t get a physical perspective on where the last few moments of Rob’s life occurred. They help fuel my determination to find a spot for this plaque, even, as I tell Chris earlier as a possibility, if it is out of state. That is a possibility. I have as long as God gives me to find a spot for this plaque. Now you see why I can’t concentrate on anyone else except the engineer? I can’t concentrate on anything else because the death of the engineer is so central to my whole experience of the accident. For me, for whatever reason, this I what it’s all about. It can’t change. It won’t change. Almost Holding Up the Train The trip back to Los Angeles is a quiet one. I realize sitting there as a man introduces a woman to the different stations along our route and two African American guys talk trash on their cell phone or to each other, who knows, that I am tired and this has been a long day. Yet I am anticipating this next part of my journey because it is hear that I intend to try and make a connection with a live Metrolink engineer. I will need the assistance of the conductor but first I have to get to the station. We speed along the rails, the two-note horn sounding, the horn that always reminds me of the accident, disgorging passengers and picking up new ones. I gather my bright yellow bag and get off the train. I don’t know where I’m going. I walk toward the other end of the train, the surroundings are not at all familiar and there's no way I’m missing that train! Not while I’m holding a folded up note in one hand and a Metrolink ticket in my pocket. I walk back toward the engine, a man asks if I need help. I explain that I’m looking for the track that the metrolink 608 is on and he says he’ll look at the schedule. No, I don’t’ need the schedule I explain a little out of breath, I need the track number and I cant’ miss that train. It’s not that I can’t miss that train, it’s just that I don’t want to miss it. There is another way home, it involves purchasing an Amtrak ticket but I’m on a mission to touch base with an engineer and I do want t get home and eat and see what’s going on at Fullerton. Mainly though after the solemnity of the memorial, strengthening connections and getting in the front of the line, it’s about touching base with my adopted engineer and so I simply cannot miss that train! We find an agent and show up on Glen’s train four minutes early. I have purposed to sit behind the engine. He’s pulling that train, I know he’s in front of us. The train settles down, the conductor makes his preliminary announcements and we’re off. A Schoolgirl with a Crush I clutch my paper tightly waiting for the conductor. He makes his rounds then comes up to talk to some people he knows. He says that he ate their pizza. I’m not sure what this is about. He also announces while my heart is in my mouth that Metrolink is not running trains to the NASCAR races this year. The trains sometimes depart an hour after their scheduled times he says, and people on the train are already drunk. “Maybe they got tired of cleaning up,” I said. The train is pretty much thrashed he says. “Hey Mr. Conductor,” I finally say, leaning forward getting his attention, “I don’t’ know your name. Could you come here for a second, please?” he does. I hold out my note. “Could you please give this to Glen?” The conductor seems surprised taking the paper out of my hand. “Could I give this to Glen?” he repeats. Suddenly I feel like a shy schoolgirl with a crush. “It’s not personal,” I say. “You can read it.” “No,” he says kindly. “I’ll give it to Glen when I see him in Ocean Side.” That’s perfectly fine with me. “Please don’t’ distract him,” I say. He chuckles. I explain how that three or four weeks ago the two of them held the train and whenever I’m at fullerton I come and wave hi to him. “Now he’ll know,” he says. He gets to Ocean Side at 8:28 according to the schedule. I hope he knows. What I hope most is that he remembers. I really do feel like a schoolgirl with a crush. Note: Read “Ice-cream and the Umbrella” if you want to experience my first reaction to an engineer’s wave. The trip passes uneventfully and then I ask the conductor if his name is Richard. “How did you guess?” he wants to know. “I know Chris Guenzler,” I explain. “You know Chris?” I explained that I told him the story of holding up the train in Los Angeles back in September and he asked me if I knew who the conductor was. When I said no, he told me it was probably Richard, so tonight I’ve made another connection and know one more crewmember. “If you take this train,” Richard explains, “this is my train.” Glen, he says, has been running this train for six months. I hope he stays another six months. Seems like Chris Guenzler is an open door to train crews. Now maybe he really will give my note to Glen. The train arrives in Fullerton, the music is not yet set up, I walk toward the locomotive. I almost make it when Glen sounds that bell and I know there will be no private moments with an engineer behind glass. But he may have my note! That will do! If you are the least bit curious, here is the content of the note I gave to Glen. Hi Glen, My Name is Shelley I have been meeting your train 608 at Fullerton for the last month saying hello to you. I just wanted you to know my name and yes if you see me there I'm here saying hello to you. I'm blind I can't make eye contact so you might not always see me. You'll know me if you see a bright yellow bag. That's me! :): Sometimes I take your train to Fullerton from L.A. I don't always make it to Fullerton due to my work schedule but when I do I come over to track 3 to say hi. I don't usually make your afternoon appearance on track 1. Stay safe and have fun operating the train. Have a nice weekend. Shelley queen of Bells! As Metrolink 608 pulls away, I make my way to the bridge. The Amtrak to San Diego is late again and as I cross the bridge and get to the patio, threading my away through all the chairs and people and getting some verbal direction from Dan one of the guys who sit in that right hand corner, I notice a very large group of people getting off that train and going through the tunnel. I flop down in my spot to Dan, Howee, Laurita teasing me about waving at the engineer. “I got off of Glen’s train” I said. “Yes. Are you stocking the engineer?” “No.” I’m laughing. “I just want friends who run locomotives is that so much to ask?” It is fun to get teased but I really do want to make friends of these people. How am I supposed to do that if I don’t try? Well, apparently all I have to do is say Chris Guenzler’s name and that helps but a lot of the footwork I think is up to me. No matter, it’s still fun to be teased about chasing engineers. “There’s a sign that says no waving at Shelley from engineer cabs,” or something like that, someone says. It was pretty funny. Soon the southwest chief comes on track three. It usually comes on track one. We watch it, the music plays, quietly today, two guitarists and a violinist set up their equipment. Curt comes through with his bike and I wave. “How did you know it was me?” he wants to know. It’s the bell. Curt was one of the first people I met at the station though I didn’t talk to him right away. I said I liked his bell and then as he usually does he included me in on his social dance card. He’s the one who knows everything that’s going on at the station. He makes appearances here and there, he brings me an orange, he tells me about NYPD Pizza a restaurant I have to try. I’m not sure what I want for dinner so we go over some possibilities. There’s pizza, no, In and Out Burger, ok but a little too far for me right now, the spaghetti Factory is out because it’s just too expensive. He can’t think of the name of a seafood restaurant that a woman tells me about in Chatsworth. Back in Chatsworth she is waiting for the metrolink 118 and transfers to Metrolink 608 getting off in Ocean Side. She tells me she goes to a restaurant in Fullerton that has good food but she can’t remember the name of it. She says it’s by a karate place. Curt can’t place it but hey now I know where NYPD pizza is; I’ll definitely have to try it out. Somehow we get into a discussion of money. He shares that he doesn’t spend much money. All his recycling efforts yield $5.00 a week and he spends it on $.99 cent sandwiches at McDonald’s. He has a stack of gift certificates that go back to 1990 he says. Hey, he has friends! Share the wealth! The band begins to play. It’s not such a bad band. “Hey what are you doing here so late?” Anna stands in front of me. She’s here covering for Jose tonight. That decides it for me. I’m going to go have a double chili cheese burger and the investment is a good one! It is yummy! Jose was right. Last time I was there he told me that the café had good chili. It’s pre purchased chili but it’s not bad at all! I think it may become a staple on my Fullerton station menu. Final Notes on All Things Today About 8:30, the time when glen should be in Ocean Side and hopefully Richard gives him my note, I decide that it’s really time to go home. I’ve had a long productive day. I’ve met at least four new people, Nancy, Rita, the woman going to Ocean Side, another woman who is waiting for a late Amtrak train, and I’ve seen the memorial and given a note to an engineer. I think I can chalk this one up to a productive day. I don’ know what will come of all my train trips and went Rob will find his spot, but I do know that on the way to finding a memorial spot for a Metrolink engineer, I will have made a million new friends and racked up a bunch of points for Amtrak travel. One final thing happens before I go. Sitting at the bus stop I realize that I’ve left my phone somewhere! Hopefully it’s in the cafe! Yes, thank God, as I go back through the parking lot, the cars and the cabs, it’s there! I pick it up and slip it into the laptop case. This is the second time I’ve left my phone somewhere today. The first time I leave it in Chatsworth on the table where I placed Rob’s flowers on September 11. I don’t intend to lose my cell phone. Greatly relieved I return to my spot on the bench, place my yellow bag at my feet and sigh. Today has been a good day in the train travel department. Solemn tears has turned to good memories, I’ve recommitted to being at the front of the line and I’ve perhaps made contact with my first live, breathing engineer, one that I found on my own. We’ll see how it all ties together. Here’s to it all turning out right.
Copyright © 2009 Shelley J Alongi |