She Likes Trains: Name That Train
Shelley J Alongi

 

Earlier freights have greeted us with their horns, acknowledging the laminated signs proclaiming Happy New Year! Some ignore us. Others do not ignore the train crazed, safety conscious, sober young and old who celebrate the new year with the glorious power of freight. It is a once-a-year occurrence, it is anticipated with pleasure, and this year it has seen me part of it. I guess my number 1 engineer remembered it; he asked me about it. How lucky can I get? The whole New Year�s event has paid off; once again I�ve been affirmed by the right one, applauded by the fans who like my blue light comments, and accepted into the fraternity of the Fullerton train watchers. It is a great place to be: happy New Year, whatever number you are, someday we�ll name that train and in the meantime we�ll go on to celebrate other trains and other days and return to do it all again in 2013. So I guess I am hooked; next year will find me there with my super hero bag, too, in this place that has provided so many opportunities, memories, and happy days to come.

�What was the first train in Fullerton in 2012?�

The origin of this question has been thoroughly discussed in another journal entry �Engineer Questions� which you can read at your leisure, just only know that it came from my number 1 favorite engineer in the world, a man who every time I listen to him or repeat one of his messages, I discover afresh is absolutely priceless. I don�t know where they found him but I�m so glad I met him, and on Friday January 6 at 3:01 pm, according to my voicemail, he asks me, the novice star struck adolescent railfan, that question. I may be star struck over the people who run the trains, the locomotives, or maybe him, but it is a question and at 1:10 AM on January 1, 2012, the answer passes before us. It is the unfortunate circumstance of fog and a headlight obscuring the road number that I report back to my engineer! And to this date, we still don� know the number. But it was a question that had I been properly prepared I could have answered right away.

Witnessing the advent of the first train at fullerton in 2012 was something I had on my radar screen as far back as January 1 2011. December 31 2010 saw me at home playing with my new phone, a phone which I still have, and which drives me crazy on occasion. Of all the phones I have owned this one allows me as a blind person the most access to menus, but I�ve had to replace the phone once and could replace it again if I wanted to. No matter. It will do till I meet all my 2012 financial goals. It just needs to work till then. Last year I worked with it, woke up late on New Year�s Eve, and decided to skip the trip, maybe because I was broke more than the phone issue, I couldn�t afford cab fare home that day despite having plenty of warning about it. This year, after one year of interacting with the railfans who put on this spread each year, I got a ride home from one of them, but last year, I just decided I would stay home and play with my phone.

So what was the first train of 2012? We may learn its number sooner or later, but this year I did not play with my phone. I headed out at noon to spend time in Fullerton before planning to meet the gang at the regular meeting place around 6:00 PM. I figured I�d be there all night and part of the morning so I wasn�t worried about arriving later. My plans originally included making an appearance, if just a cameo, at Calvary Chapel Fullerton�s New Year�s Eve pot luck, getting lunch, and getting a manicure. I made the lunch and the manicure, but then decided to just skip the pot luck and head directly to the station. The bus schedule is a little crazy on Saturdays and since I still had to get cookies, and since I didn�t really know if I was going to get a ride from the church to the station, and since I really only had money for one cab fair I decided it would be wiser just to go straight to the station. After all, the whole night was about trains, wasn�t it? Why not start while the night was young? And so I did.

The bus trip was free, riding the Orange County buses from 6:00 PM December 31 till 02:00 AM January 1 was free, so I made my way to the stop after dropping by Smart and Final to get cookies. Yes, the other thing that I meant to do that day was make my famous chocolate chip cookies. Somehow that didn�t get done this year. I spent many hours working on transcripts, working my regular schedule, and even working when I took time off that week, and didn�t get to the cookies. Originally I had scheduled five days off, but five days turned into eight days since we could take additional time off since we�re traditionally slow that week. Disney reservations may have been slow, but my life wasn�t. Gloriously overwhelmed with work I worked to finish the project and then prepared to leave that day.

The day was cool and pleasant; like many days in southern California are in December. Canadians who call us to make reservations think it is a heat wave if the barometer hits sixty degrees Fahrenheit. Southern Californians think it is an arctic wind that blasts down from the north if those temperatures are combined with such a blast. We were lucky on December 31, 2011, there was no wind, there was only gloriously cool temperatures and the promise of good company, trains, maybe food, and just bringing in the new year in a different fashion. Las Vegas and Disneyland are two famous destinations on New Year�s Eve; crowds are spectacular at both places. Crowds leave the Fullerton train station in peace, though we can see the firework display from Fullerton College, a place I used to work in 2002. Tonight I am happy to leave all the Disney revelers to themselves and join the young and older railfans who string up lights, have a snowman decorating their cage, and a web cam, and maybe one or two computers; I don�t remember that night how many computers tracked train traffic. Molly and Alicia are the two computers and they track train traffic back to places I do not recognize. May, Atwood, Basta, these are signals I recognize. I am sadly lacking in my memorization of signals, but not lacking in social interactions, or anything else tonight. There is food, too, later on, and lots of cookies.

Lunch today at Burger King is a whopper, French fries, Diet Coke, and two tacos. They sell two tacos for a dollar and I usually always get them when I frequent Burger King. Living on that one corner for twenty years, perhaps Burger King is the only place that didn�t move and give place to a different business. The banks changed hands, several restaurants have come and gone, but on that corner, the Moble station and Burger King are constants. I don�t think their food is particularly tastey, but it will do and so today it does. I am the only one in the restaurant it seems till forty-five minutes after I enter. During that wonderfully silent time, I sit and enjoy my meal, relishing in the fact that even after tonight I still have two more days to recover from all my work and holiday festivities. Forty-five minutes into this aperitif, a couple with two rowdy children enters the store and I know it�s time to depart and make my way to train paradise. Or at least start to make my way there.

One manicure and pedicure later, a trip to get cookies, yes store bought cookies will have to do today, and I am on my way.

The station is fairly busy, I arrive just as number 4, the Southwest chief, pulls out of the station. I don�t remember the regulars being there tonight; they may be celebrating somewhere else.

I arrive, it seems, too, just in time for pizza.

�I don�t have any money,� I tell the fan�s ringleader when he asks me if I want some.

�You don�t need any,� he says.

I take some slices, still full from Burger King�s deliciousness, but there�s always room for at least one or two slices of pizza.

The evening is full of trains, the fan dances, bowing to freights, the fun things they do which I�ve explained many times over, and the conversation. It ranges widely, from police scanner activity to what Valerie is interested in hearing in her own cage. Valerie is our resident homeless lady who sleeps in one of the cages, probably till she�s roused from it early in the morning in time for the commuters who appear with their briefcases and cell phones, hoping their trains will get them safely to their destinations. Some kind of �adult conversation� is going on, Brett says, which we will not have here, save it for the girl in cage 3, they say, and that would be Valerie.

Valerie is harmless enough; someone gives her a pretty midnight blue jacket which she passes along to me. It is fleece lined and would have cost me about $80.00. It is in excellent condition.

Some of the fans around the station, not tonight�s celebrants, speak with condescension about some of the people who take clothes and hygiene supplies from one of the groups that hands out such things every few weeks in the parking lot of the station. I have taken several things from that location and they have all been in excellent condition. I have a full time job and I find those things useful during certain difficult periods in my life. I do not always frequent the giveaways but I will not stand in judgment of those who do; I don�t know their stories, I don�t walk in their shoes. If some go from place to place looking for a free meal and don�t want to work, God knows who they are; others are honestly in need and I will deny no man the extras that some might pay money for if they don�t have it and others are willing to give. God knows who is in need and who is taking unnecessarily. I know what I prefer to do and I know what I will and won�t take, but I won�t deny anyone the opportunity to get what may prove to be helpful to them.

Tonight these people are in other places. Valerie sits here cocooned under her blankets. The blue jacket she offers me is too big for her and so she needs someone to take it off her hands. Since I have been wanting to purchase one I take her offering. It is a good fit and very warm.

The jacket comes in handy as the fog rolls in and the temperature drops. Time passes. Freights come and go. The celebration increases in intensity across the parking lot, the Slidebar is doing a grand business. The steak house sees me later on taking a restroom break, snaking my way through revelers and cars, using the music as a sound guide, making friends with someone who helps me locate an entrance and who wishes all of us happy New Year. Before that, I make a trip to the Spaghetti Factory with Lena, Danny�s mom, the woman who gives me a ride home later on that night. It�s more like 2:00 in the morning when we depart the station after pulling down the lights and various decorations, still awake, high on revelry, caffeine from my three liter bottle of Diet Coca-Cola I bring with me.

At one time a group of us discusses something I don�t remember now, about lights and Kay mart. They are famous for their blue light specials, as many of us know from advertising years ago. A blue light or signal must be clearly distinguishable according to my handy dandy general code for the operation of trains, rule 5.13, to protect workers repairing, or inspecting rolling equipment. Blue flags are also used to signify that equipment is under repair or inspection and must not be moved except by the person who put the flag on the equipment. Somehow this all gets worked into the conversation and it is the newest kid on the block, that would be me, who works it in. The comments are responded too and applauded. So, see, I�ve learned something! I love learning about my trains and tonight my self education is rewarded.

The general merriment is broadcast by web cam to those who cannot attend, and freights come and go.

As midnight approaches, the mood grows even more festive. The poring of the martinelis begins and soon all hold the obligatory glass in hand, touching rims, toasting the beginning of 2012. And so now it begins: the wait for the first train of 2012. It is cold, foggy, and exciting. Revelers across the parking lot blow noisemakers, Fullerton College does its firework show, and we wait. The tracks are empty. Now, the three note strident clamor of an air horn alerts the group to an approaching train: but It�s not really a train, we can�t find it on the computer and there is no signal indicating approaching traffic. It is most likely someone with such a contraption on their vehicle wanting to celebrate, alternately raising and then dashing the hopes of the train enthusiasts.

I don�t know if you can find any gathering like this across the country. I�ve been told that Fullerton is a unique place and it may be so. It was a place I discovered twenty years ago though I hardly frequented it. It is a place where I took several Metrolink trains while I was Division Governor of Toastmasters division E. It is a place where I came to mourn the death of an engineer. It is the place where I met the railfans young and old, got an overview of railroading, and met my first engineer who extended the timeless magic of his profession and still does from hundreds of miles away. Fullerton is the place where a man once proposed to me long before I met my number 1 engineer. Now, it is the place that finds me celebrating the beginning of 2012 twenty-three years after I moved to Fullerton.

Whatever 2012 brings and whoever it brings to me, I have started it here. In the absence of television, humans create their own entertainment and conversation flourishes here. Jonathan talks about what�s on the police scanner, someone else talks about trains, I ask Lena if the minor who texted Rob Sanchez is here. No, she says, rob should have stopped those texts since he was the responsible adult. Yes, it is true, and I agree. I call Glenn and tell him that I�m at Fullerton celebrating 2012�s beginning so happy New Year number 1 engineer. People stand dangerously near the railroad tracks, maybe sometimes even on them, one woman rolls a stroller across the tracks. This action killed a two year old last year in San Klemente. We all gasp in horror. We don�t want our first train through Fullerton to be plagued with a fatality.

The faithful track the progress of trains. One is an hour away and so now the count down begins. Some take their leave while others remain steadfast in their places waiting the train. Dave and Kathy are not here tonight, they are at a progressive dinner sponsored by their church. Time passes. Lena walks around to rid herself of the encroaching cold. I stand my ground. Soon, the lights indicate a train, the signals flash on track 1, there is a green signal and then it is here! A westbound, heading to Los Angeles, its number unknown, a stack train whistles past us. We wait and applaud and do the dance. I don�t do this dance so much I�m just the silent observer. But I�ve done my share of waving and laughing and smiling.

Earlier freights have greeted us with their horns, acknowledging the laminated signs proclaiming Happy New Year! Some ignore us. Others do not ignore the train crazed, safety conscious, sober young and old who celebrate the new year with the glorious power of freight. It is a once-a-year occurrence, it is anticipated with pleasure, and this year it has seen me part of it. I guess my number 1 engineer remembered it; he asked me about it. How lucky can I get? The whole New Year�s event has paid off; once again I�ve been affirmed by the right one, applauded by the fans who like my blue light comments, and accepted into the fraternity of the Fullerton train watchers. It is a great place to be: happy New Year, whatever number you are, someday we�ll name that train and in the meantime we�ll go on to celebrate other trains and other days and return to do it all again in 2013. So I guess I am hooked; next year will find me there with my super hero bag, too, in this place that has provided so many opportunities, memories, and happy days to come.

 

 

Copyright © 2012 Shelley J Alongi
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"