She Likes Trains: A Raging Railroad Crush
Shelley J Alongi

 

All of us here as we gather whether we run the trains or sit on the platforms have something to learn. It’s all part of the railroad crush that keeps us coming back for more. Our intense fascination with all things trains will see to that. Cats, what’s on your lap, locomotives, crazy for trains, feel better number one engineer, and cookies. I bet it all gets better from here. How could it do anyting else?
 
Well happy birthday how old ru gonna be? 26 27 28? Just to let you know ur my #1 rail nut friend. Happy birthday have a good weekend.

This is Glenn’s birthday message to me on July 12, almost a month after my trip to Lancaster on his trains 205 and return to Los Angeles on 214. The trip occurred on June 14, 2013.
I asked him a few days earlier if you call the guys at Fullerton railnuts, then what am I? So, I guess he answered it. That is the best message ever. Even if he's teasing. i always call him #1 engineer. I had to delete this message off my phone so I wanted to write it down. It’s the best news, ever.

All the days from June 14 to July 31 are spent dealing with this trip. More than the people who board the train it is the engineer who captivates me. This captivation occurs on many levels, none of which you might guess in all your wonderings. Perhaps I can’t guess them. I think they have to do with reminders of childhood memories of my father who used some of his same phrases. It has to do with memories of people I’ve met over the last twenty years who exhibit the same personality traits. Maybe it is fascination on levels not yet discovered. It is a special connection that perhaps only has to do with my railroad experience: the first meeting of the engineer mingled unwittingly with the Chatsworth accident. The subject comes up numerous times over the last four years from inside the cab and on the phone. In that first January 31 2010 phone conversation, I learned he had a personal friend killed on that train Metrolink111, something that lingers in the back of my mind till December 2011. On that night I learned his friend’s name and looked it up on the Los Angeles times site where pages for all those killed are set up. On his page is a post from the engineer’s family. I recognize the last name. It does not state who wrote the post, but the implications are clear. Since that day I have been unable to ask Glenn about his friend. It makes me tear up even thinking about it. It’s my delayed reaction to the accident that catapulted me into the hallowed halls of railroad history and equipment, stories and personalities.

How was I to know on that October 14 2009 day as I stood by his cab, and he announced to the helpful passenger “She likes trains” that he was uttering the words that perhaps enhanced my own raging crush on the whole event of the railroad. I’d say it was on him, and maybe it is, but in some ways it is beyond that. Railroading is an avocation I have found that thoroughly buries me; pay back for my own overwhelming tendencies.
“If I overwhelm you,” I text him, “let me know.” I think he will be the one to overwhelm me. He’s already solaced and comforted and explained and caressed that very part of me that craves information. It is a raging railroad crush.

And, it’s not just me.

You can see that at the train station in Fullerton. People of all ages dot the platform to catch a train or two; anyone from the fascinated two year-old who rests in her parents arms on the north side of paradise, to the man sitting with us on the east end of the platform saying he’ll go to Oregon to see his girl, all the while longing for the slab train. The railroad historian who sells time tables at the upcoming show on August 3, the Railroading show in Buena park, the narrow gage junky who is always supplying my demand for railroad logos from the Orange empire Railway Museum, the woman in a wheelchair who has just come out of the hospital who counts cars, her father a railroad crewmember in his day. A crush is defined as an “intense yet short lived infatuation” according to Dictionary.com or your print Webster’s dictionary. Often I’ve referred to my railroad crush, but I think that everyone exhibits intense interest in some aspect of the railroad here. The draw of railroading to me, what fuels my own intense crush, is the sheer amount of information on whatever level you want to pursue it. Some are happy with just pictures. There is a place in my railroad journey for pictures, by all means. Some make it their entire focus whether they’re posting them on Flicker or in a Face book group called Cal Railfans or on West Coast Rail Forums.

“There’s a train leaving in five minutes,” I tell Jennifer on one particular day. Her daughter, the two-year-old shows a budding fascination for trains. She tells her husband who Is headed to the south side of paradise. I’m talking about the 644. They’re looking for one to quench her curiosity. Glad I could help.

Such has been the state of affairs throughout the unseasonably cool month of July. Sitting at the west end listening to conversations about city politics or old movies, the diatribes against city government and such things interrupted by the sweeping freights with their double stacks of half empty containers plying the tracks for the usual spaces on our railroad. In another railroad, I’m told, and now from some experience, there are different locomotives and different freight carriers. There are single person crewed freight trains, something the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen espouses and has begun the process of filing legislation requiring all United States trains to be two man crews. The process is in the beginning stages, and I suppose it all boils down to an interest on a political basis to protect crews and end the money saving practice by too many freight companies. This all comes in the wake of a Main and Atlantic runaway crude oil train in Lac-Méganticthe Quebec on July 6, 2013 that killed forty-seven people and has drawn of the attention of the Federal Railroad Administration who has now begun to set in order an edict requiring freight companies to design procedures for securing trains when unattended. The union in charge of the locomotive engineers and Trainmen in the U.S. has issued this call for legislation, demonstrating their own type of crush, their written desire to protect their employees and their environment. The intense crush on the railroad extends from crewmembers who take pictures and post them on Facebook to the homeless guy sleeping by the railroad tracks who either has an interest in trains or cannot find anywhere to sleep, so he says.

All along the platform you can hear people discussing train signals and colors, equipment, and speculating on whatever people who have a crush on trains speculate on.

During this month when I wrestle with forming my own pictures of a man who has helped me understand the railroad, reconciling images in my brain to the person standing beside me with no barriers, I experience my own intense feelings. I’m the luckiest star struck middle aged teenage railfan, ever. I got the best engineer. I have a primary source who can help depending on two hectic schedules. And, yes, I do have a crush and have since before meeting one particular person who is the most willing or able to help. Maybe I was just brave enough to get a phone number I have two other phone numbers but haven’t seen those two around the station for quite some time. I’m sure they’re willing to help, too since one paid for dinner once.

The locomotives, the original drawing point for me serve as comfort during this readjustment period. Sometimes, during this month of sorting and analysis I head over to the south side of paradise, to track four more than once to derive comfort from the stationary trains, properly attended by their two man crews. Making my way down the two year old platform now, finding the wrought iron inches feet from the gate that keeps passengers from spilling over the ramp onto the street below, I sit parallel with the hissing MPI, taking comfort from it, even if it isn’t my sweet purring Electromotive diesel engine. The EMD company owned by Progressive Rail has been given a new order of locomotives from Metrolink, the Southern California Regional Rail Authority’s comer service. That would be our trains, of course.

Sitting on the platform holding my phone, caressing a picture, thinking, in one instance my phone ringing and taking a now unremembered call, I emerge myself in the delightful hum of the engine, even if it is an MOPE. That locomotive, feet from me, provides comfort for my ravaged mind. I’ve decided that taking Glenn’s train to Lancaster and back, and snapping that picture was followed by a separation something on the order of three years ago when he first went to his new run. The separation for some reason is as intense as it was then. It’s like walking away from a light source for me. Not sure why that is. I’ve decided that that man is a power house of energy. I do respond to personalities and this one just leaves me empty when I separate from it. It’s a physical ache, sometimes. This is where I am on my railroad journey and this intense attachment fuels the remainder of my raging crush on his railroad.

One of the things I’ve been meaning to look up is the Santa Fe locomotives that he operated. Finally, between work hours, six day work weeks, sleeping, and doing it all again, I find time to visit a web site I’ve marked in my favorites at least two years ago. Has my intense crush lasted this long? This is longer than any interest I’ve ever entertained, except the interest in the Holocaust, something that definitely involved trains. I have not looked up German or Wehrmacht locomotives of World War II vintage, but I have looked at my list of Santa Fe locomotives and refreshed my memory on the SD45s that Glenn would have operated as well as the F7s. In one of our conversations he mentioned that they would have run those F7s to Chicago, or at least seen them. At this writing I don’t know if he went that far. I will have to ask him about that. It’s another question to add to my list.

It seems, however, that this month, the railfans at Fullerton, the “rail nuts” as Glenn calls them, have not provided information so much about trains as they have in the past. It does not lessen their crush by any means, as the sweeping freights elicit the same responses: pens at the ready, eyes to the lights, especially when it comes to the slab train. The guys sitting on the benches will tell me the colors of the signals.

“We have a flashing yellow on track 2,” one will say, which seems to indicate that a freight will be coming through and may be receiving a solid yellow which possibly could lead to a red. Sometimes all three tracks are red: north, south, and middle as they have been called in the past.

Nights see me sitting here despite my early morning work shifts. Not every night, only certain nights, and they are looked forward to with anticipation.

There’s Dennis the truck mechanic and his daughter Jennifer, not related to the Jennifer with the two year-old mentioned earlier. Adam, called the hen teaser, because he does love to flirt with the girls sits with us on occasion. He loves to ring my bells and sometimes I put them out of sight so he can’t indulge this particular interest. He’s the one planning to go to Oregon somehow and reunite with his high school girlfriend. He’s the one who longs for the slab trains which run with some kind of regularity, but since we aren’t hooked up to a computer source, their arrival on our track is always a surprise. We don’t know if Adam will ever go to Oregon, but he’ll sure be here when the slab train makes its appearance, mostly between 8:30 and 10:00 pm.

The month hasn’t been completely about analysis, though. On July 12, my forty-seventh birthday, I show up at the station after having spent my birthday with Gary, going to lunch at the Red Robin. One final stop to Starbucks and then Smart and Final and I arrive with cookies in hand. Yes, I said cookies. The railfans always find a number of things to tease me about on the platform: who’s in my lap and why I can’t get good cat pictures, for instance. The inference is I can get good human pictures because they’re not in my lap.

“She’s working on that one,” says one of the better known rail nuts on the platform.

That’s only one of many things. Haven’t heard much about the key to the super 8 in Lancaster, lately, but the cat pictures substitute nicely, I think. The big one, though, with increasing regularity, is that I am hording cookies and not sharing. So, the day I show up with cookies, my biggest purported of the cookie myth is not there to share them. Arriving shortly after 5:00 pm I make my rounds, distributing cookies to some on the patio, at the planter by the bridge, at Valerie’s hangout, and end up at the west end of the platform. Soon, a familiar subject of conversation appears: Mel Miller, whom, it seems makes several trips to Winslow Arizona for a now forgotten convention. He is the subject of conversation between the engineer and the star struck railfan (that would be me, on Friday, June 14. And, now, after not seeing him for several months, here he is talking on his cell phone. He sits on the wall with us, showing pictures of his girlfriend and talking about re trucking locomotives at Orange Empire Railway Museum.

“I’ve been chasing dreams in Lancaster,” I say at some point, having nothing to do with re trucking locomotives except that one is an SD-45, a Santa Fe locomotive, my railroad crush’s locomotive of yester year. Ah, the questions, the stories. I can’t wait to add stories to that book. Mr. Miller the former Orange County Transit Authority bus driver politely declines cookies and by the end of the night I carry one package home, having distributed a fair amount of cookies on my birthday. This is the second or third time I’ve spent a birthday at the Fullerton train station.

The best birthday present is the message from Glenn calling me his number 1 rail nut friend. He’s either said I’m crazy, or crazy about trains. Possibly, both. He is an expert on either subject, so he would know his meanings. I will take the first one. And, maybe the second. It depends on the day.

The month winds down, my engineer makes a trip to the dentist, perhaps causing more distress for me than him. I only know that on July 21 when Disney closes the Travel Company at noon due to protests planned near Anaheim City hall, I am unable to talk to him because of just “having a tooth yanked.” I could analyze that conversation in detail, but that is not for these pages.

The month is full of emotion and questions, trips to the station, and trains. We see small groups of foamers, Brett as their ring leader. He calls himself the ringmaster implying that the foamers are a circus. He may be right. There is a death among them. Charles has left us. I know I remember who he is. It seems a heart attack has claimed his life. Scott does not make too many trips down to see us. Brett and small groups go to dinner and return by 8:00 PM to hang in their own cage and do their rail thing. They haven’t done any train dances lately. And, yet, they have their own crushes on trains. They set up their computerw. They know when trains reach Atwood, May, Valley View, Basta, Fullerton junction. There are still so many names I do not know. But, my raging railroad crush will see that I learn them.

All of us here as we gather whether we run the trains or sit on the platforms have something to learn. It’s all part of the railroad crush that keeps us coming back for more. Our intense fascination with all things trains will see to that. Cats, what’s on your lap, locomotives, crazy for trains, feel better number one engineer, and cookies. I bet it all gets better from here. How could it do anything else?

 

 

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