Metrolink111: The Disney Engineer
Shelley J Alongi

 

Sunday March 1, 2009, a balmy, beautiful spring day with gentle warm breezes and a line to get into the parking structure at Disney Land, I finally met a train engineer, no, wait, not one, but two train engineers. Pull up a chair and kick off your shoes, and listen to my story.

I flashed my cast ID and we were parked and ready to go into the parks. Today’s adventures consisted of three things: (1) lunch at the Story Tellers Café at the Grand Californian, exploring California Adventure Park, and then going to Disney Land to do one thing: see if we could ride on the locomotive of the steam engine of the Disney Land railroad. The quest to ride on the locomotive of the Disney Land railroad began on Wednesday February 25 with a call to the Travel Company where I work from a man who subsequently told me he operated the steam train on the Disney Land railroad. Joe Jackson was his name and he was staying at the grand Californian this weekend for his honeymoon I could never resist asking if I could ride the locomotive of the Disney Land railroad.

“Absolutely,” he said cheerfully. He instructed me to go to the Main street station and ask for him, and if he wasn’t there one of his colleagues could take care of me.

Today, this beautiful Sunday morning, my friend and I were headed off to the Story Tellers Cafe to do a restaurant review and then we knew that Joe Jackson the train engineer wasn’t going to be working that day because of his honeymoon, but we went to the station and found a cast member and did as I was instructed.
“Oh, you want to be tender,” said Jessica. She instructed us to go into the station and wait for the next train that had a tender seat and she would see if I could ride it. She said that the next train to come in had a tender seat and that if the engineer didn’t have to take on fuel or blow off steam he’d let me ride on the locomotive. Now I can’t think of too many engineers who might not want to blow off steam occasionally, but hopefully this was going to be my lucky day.
We sat in the station decorated like the early 1900s, and shortly the conductor came back to say by the way it could get warm in there because of the steam “it’s a real steam engine” they explained to us and some have complained about how warm it gets. I knew it would get warm, I was wearing my summer clothes I said, and that wasn’t any problem. Shortly after that the conductor returned to tell us that it would be fifty dollars, according to the engineer, so come on down. Kimberly and I walked past the line to the front of the train and there were two engineers to meet us: Robert, maybe Mexican if you go by coloring, the fireman on the locomotive, a certified railroad engineer he told me, and Jeff with the “pretty blue eyes” Kimberly told me, the engineer who got to pull the levers and throttle the engine to speed and take us on our journey through the park and to the Grand Canyon, of course.

“How am I doing?” he asked. “What are all these levers for?” Ask an engineer, he’ll tell you! We didn’t have any problem with his engineering skills. None at all.
We climbed up behind Jeff and Robert both wearing their blue and white striped uniforms, onto a bench seat divided into three sections by rails, and were strapped into the seat for our journey by steam through the imaginary world of Disney Land on a real steam engine. Jeff explained to us that there were several locomotives, one made by the Baldwin Locomotive Company, and some that had been found from different parts of the United states. On the windows on Main Street you can see pictures of some of the locomotives and train cars that have visited the park over the years. The locomotive we were on was one that WD himself had paid to be built for the park and it huffed an puffed and breathed its fire from one station to the other, all the while with a joking engineer and an obliging fireman both at the controls.

“Feel free to ask any questions,” Robert said, “and if we can’t think of the answer we’ll come up with a good lie.”

Read The Signals

Disneyland has more than one train operating on the track through the park and so The route is divided up into ten block zones, Robert explained, and the signals correspond to each of the zones. I didn’t get a full outline of each block zone but I certainly get the idea. they do use signals to communicate with the conductors and each other, and the trains. Yellow means stop at the next block zone and green means you can go. The signals are very similar to those on the big railroad. There are trackside signaling devices there for the conductor, the engineer explained. The signals used in the cab were for the engineers and one of them explained that we’d probably get a yellow light in the tunnel just before reaching Main street station because there was another train in front of us. We decided it was probably a good idea if we stopped the train to let the other one go on its way.

“So we’ll stop out of the tunnel,” I said.

“Yeah we might not want to stop in the tunnel so the smoke stack won’t let loose in the tunnel. The t-rex wouldn’t like it.”

“Or the people,” I said.

Robert sat in the left seat, manning the firebox providing steam to the engine. The engine huffed and puffed just like a living, breathing thing. Fire came out of a two inch circle between their legs, Kimberly said, and Robert opened up the grate so that Kimberly could see the fire. He also rang the bell when we got to the stations. Continual ringing of the bell means let’s get out of here. I hear that on the Metrolink sometimes the bell just keeps ringing and ringing like the engineer is saying hey man let’s go gotta get out of here, gotta run baby. Haha that was my observation.

“Could I ring the bell?” I asked. The rope was too far for me to reach but Robert did not let my request go unnoticed. He heard my question and came up with a plan. Jeff sat in the right seat pushing buttons, pulling levers, checking gages, and reading signals. There weren’t many to read, but it was important to read them. He explained the whistles and their meanings. This was important information, because some people who sit with him ask him to blow the whistle, but he explained that the whistles are signals for the conductor. I knew that just from being interested in trains and having done some cursory research on that even before the Chatsworth Metrolink train wreck pulled me down this path of new discovery. I didn’t tell Jeff this, I only listened, because, really and truly, I don’t’ know everything. One long blast he said meant that someone was trying to get in the wrong entrance and we ‘busted them” he said humorously. It was a signal to the conductor to go remedy the situation. The other blasts were more traditional. Two blasts means go forward, three reverse which he didn’t’ do, four means hey Mr. Conductor come up here I need to ask you a question. Of course, he explained with a smile, we also have wires in the conductor’s underwear and so if we really need him we can zap him one and get him up here quick! Of course, I said, it’s all part of that Disney costume. It’s a little extra assurance that the conductor will listen to the engineer, since, as Jeff put it, the conductor is in charge of the train and the engineer is in charge of the engine.
Kimberly remembered her camera today and so I got in close with Jeff and Robert and got pictures. I didn’t’ think it was fair that I should have only a picture with Jeff the engineer pulling all the levers and blowing the whistle, so I said let’s get one with Robert. We did. Now they’ll be famous for life.

We made our way from station to station, the floor moving under our feet. We went through tunnels, passed Splash Mountain, Autopia, Small World, Tune Town, not necessarily in that order, and slowly made our way back to the Main Street station. The engine huffed and puffed, the whistle blew and finally Robert’s plan for me to ring the bell came into action. He attached a bandana to the rope of the bell so I could pull it.

“When I blow the whistle twice,” Jeff explained, “then you can ring the bell. Of course,” he went on, “that means you get twenty-five percent of his pay.”

“That’s okay,” I said, “That will make up for the overtime I’m not getting right now at the Travel Company.” Robert really thought that was funny. It makes me smile remembering him laugh about that.
We worked as a team. I rang that bell for all it was worth. I told them I was a music major I could really make it sing. They asked me what I played I said piano, no, train bell, of course. On my last ring as we made it to the Main Street station the bandanna came off and Robert had to take over ringing the bell because I couldn’t reach the rope anymore. We all just had a good laugh over that.

As we got to the Main Street station, we detrained and posed for one more picture.

“Thank you for riding with us on the Disneyland Railroad,” intoned Jeff as we parted ways. Kimberly and I made our way down the stairs and as the train departed on another round through primal lands, the engineers waved at us and sent us on our way. Little did they know that they had made a dream come true.

Connections with the Past and Future

So now I can say I rode on the locomotive of the steam train at Disney Land. Is this all because of a train wreck out of Chatsworth in September 2008? Would I without that accident ever have considered riding on the train with the engineer? I guess I should never say never, but I’m not sure I would have thought of it. I didn’t think of it two years ago when I went to work for Disney Land. It’s sad to think that the death of a train engineer led me to discover trains and then go ride on a steam locomotive. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that man even though I never met him. But I had fun on the locomotive and I’m glad I did it. Working for Disney Land, experiencing the train wreck out of Chatsworth only in my own head, getting a call from a train engineer on the steam train at Disney Land, and then today having a chance to go down there on a trip that had already been planned, I got to do something new, I met two more people, I guess you can finally say I met a train engineer.

“He didn’t take off his gloves so I couldn’t tell if he was married or not,” my friend teased me. This goes back to a question I asked at a Toastmasters speech contest yesterday, something that has absolutely nothing to do with this story, but she remembered my question and decided to tell me she could not determine the engineer’s marital status. Well, that didn’t matter anyway, what mattered was that it was all very fun, educational, and another step on my journey into trainhood. I wonder what will happen next on my adventure through the railroad world? I’m sure I don’t know, and I could never guess, but I’ll be sure to let you know.

      

 

 

Copyright © 2009 Shelley J Alongi
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"