She Likes Trains: North Stories
Shelley J Alongi

 

FaceBook, Trains magazine, and occasional jaunts to the Fullerton train station, make up my railroad existence, lately. Occasional conversations with travelers coming to Disneyland by train dot my days.

“Are you taking the Starlight down?” I ask someone, eliciting surprise.

“Do you know about trains?”

I make friends with engineers,” I say, though I haven’t made many lately. Hopefully, I don’t’ make any enemies. That’s always possible, I suppose. So far, not yet.

Breaking with a new established routine, I wait till my next Friday trip. Since I’m on vacation the plan is to make it there tomorrow, to catch 707’s engineer if not the train. I will make more trips to the station in the next two weeks in order to read my book and hopefully make some new contacts with crews. I don’t know. I am kind of shy. No engineer I’ve ever talked to thinks that. Glen, the man who answers my questions and tells me he rode 3751 between SB and LA, doesn’t think I’m shy.

What have my visits to the train station had in common these days? Certainly not the engineers. In fact, despite my quest to meet all of them, some time, somewhere, I haven’t met any of them in the last few months. I suppose I’ll have to start all over again, standing under the stairs, but they don’t come to the stairs anymore, so I’ll just have to walk out to the tracks and get the silent treatment, or the question. “Do you need this train, miss?”


“No, Mr. Engineer. I don’t need the train. I need you. I need you to tell me stories. It’s just something I have to do.”

I suppose the reason I haven’t met more of them lately is because I’m doing what they do: work, work, work. Not as much as some, and probably not as much as others. But, the idea is the same, anyway. Work, work, and for what? To pay the bills? To have something to call your own castle? Fulfillment? Just because? Just because, that will do. Being off government help, that’s a big plus. Ask me, I know. But, the visits haven’t really been about that. I’ll see them again.

One of my engineers, the one nicknamed the stock broker, the one with two small girls, bidded off the former schedule, my magic train, so I’ll have to take the opportunity to associate another name and story with the magic train. 608 that’s the magic train.

In order to maintain my social life I’ll have to go see another train. 707. My conductor told me. Now, the conductors tell me where the engineers are. The engineers tell me where they are, they ask me if they ever worked with a certain conductor. They ask me if I’ll be there tomorrow. They say we’ll talk again, and we always do. They say, you’re my info, baby.

Making contact with 707 and 608 now means taking that flight of stairs twice. But, I’m really not about the numbers. I’m about the names and the stories and so I’ll have to go over there and reacquaint myself with those stories.

Once, sitting on the perch, the high brick wall with the wrought iron fence behind me, 606 pulls up, my sweet EMD, bell clanging. And, I’m on the north side. He’s on the south side. I’ve had time to get there. I forgot. I got there early enough to get across the bridge to my 606 engineer, if he’s still there, an I missed it. That’s how distracted I’ve been.

“You’re getting rusty,” says the forty year veteran of train watching. And, maybe I am.

Friday has been the day that I show up to the station, lately. I suppose it’s because instead of getting up at 4:00 in the morning the rest of the week. On Saturday I get up at 5:00 in the morning. An extra hour makes a difference sometimes. I show up on Friday because I have the extra hour.

What happens since my April trip? Well, I haven’t made it to the station to talk to Norm the retired BNSF engineer. He says he hasn’t made it to the station on Sunday’s lately. On a New Year’s day, long ago, make that 2009, sitting in the Santa Fe Café, I called Janice and she told me to call Norm and so then I called Glenn. You see, it was Janice’s fault I got Norm’s number. Now, it comes in handy. Janice is still influencing my railroad social behavior from beyond her peaceful plot.

I have to ask him if he’s there yet so maybe I can make it there on a Sunday. I am currently on vacation and I have one more Sunday off. Maybe I’ll text him. See if he’ll be there. I think it’s the only time he gets there now. I’ll just have to find out. It only took me a year to talk to him when I was sitting on the patio. And, he did tell me he would tell me stories.

But, back to Fridays. The slab train, no trains, the best recorded bells, ever. Tyler intrigued at ten months with my bells, the attentive grandma taking them out of his mouth. I can’t do it, my hands are full of him. He has two teeth, they say. Has time really gone that fast? One birth, a couple of marathons run by Stacy, a million hours worked by me. A million hours worked by my favorite engineer. And, all my other ones.

Adam and Dennis, two new guys who hang out at the station now have dominate the evenings. Dennis the truck driver who talks way too much. Adam woo just is off somewhere. My bells intrigue him, too. He likes the one with the points. They’re brass. Some have gold polish.
I haven’t bought any more since 2012. I’m still paying for the ones I bought. That’s just one of the things I have to work to pay off. Right now I’m working to keep a roof over my head. But, we have the bells. We have the baby. Lately, Friday is deposit day at my new bank. After that I go to Varsity Burger. Then, hop the 43 down Harbor Boulevard to the train station. I have to go to the café and buy ice-cream or something. Last week I go to the north side, the foamers are missing. Adam and Dennis are there, but not for long. The schoolteacher is there, negative as ever. There aren’t many trains. But the ones that come by are worth the wait.

It’s a place to hang out, to be with those who value my input or teach me something.

“She’s going to walk on by like she doesn’t see us,” says the forty year veteran of train watching.

“Who are you again? What’s your name?”

It’s a balmy evening.

“Glenn,” he says. His name isn’t Glenn. I laugh and hop up on my perch. It’s so I can see better, I say. I just like being up there, my foot kicking the light built into the brick wall.

Dogs pass us. They watch what goes on across the tracks. There isn’t much to watch, not many trains. But, like I said, the ones that come are worth the wait.

Once, I hop down from my perch and lift my grip to my shoulder, supplied with apples, raisins, almonds, Starbucks mugs, flashlights, stuff. I walk down to the café and stop. Trucker Dave is there. He says Adam is moving to Oregon. Maybe. Maybe not.

“I’m on my way to catch a bus,” I say, something I tell a young freight engineer once sitting on the planters waiting for something. I tell the engineer, you’re making me late. There’s anew one. Dave says, “Do you want a ride home?”

I’ll take that. But, not before the glories hunks of steel hurl themselves down the tracks. It is the glorious slab train, again. When that leaves, they say, it’s all over. Veterans and foamers and people wanting to know engineer and crew stories scatter to lives in far flung destinations with problems and triumphs, jobs, hobbies, families, pets. They convene here the next day or a week later to start it all again.

The station quiets down. The Santa Fe Café is long locked. Lately, the homeless aren’t in their spots. Valerie is spotted once but it occurs t me on my last trip to the 1930’s building, the safety striping, the glorious steel stretching out for miles, that she is not there. I don’t know where she is this Friday night, May 31, my most recent trip.

What I do know is that lately when I’m there I’m so exhausted I don’t want to take the stairs to the south side of paradise. 608 is long gone, its crew tucked away somewhere, or waiting. Who knows. Someday I’ll get there earl enough to make the hike. Why don’t you take he elevator? You might ask. Do you have something to prove? No. It’s just faster that way.

FaceBook, Trains magazine, and occasional jaunts to the Fullerton train station, make up my railroad existence, lately. Occasional conversations with travelers coming to Disneyland by train dot my days.

“Are you taking the Starlight down?” I ask someone, eliciting surprise.

“Do you know about trains?”

I make friends with engineers,” I say, though I haven’t made many lately. Hopefully, I don’t’ make any enemies. That’s always possible, I suppose. So far, not yet.

Breaking with a new established routine, I wait till my next Friday trip. Since I’m on vacation the plan is to make it there tomorrow, to catch 707’s engineer if not the train. I will make more trips to the station in the next two weeks in order to read my book and hopefully make some new contacts with crews. I don’t know. I am kind of shy. No engineer I’ve ever talked to thinks that. Glen, the man who answers my questions and tells me he rode 3751 between SB and LA, doesn’t think I’m shy.

 

 

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