She Likes Trains: Taking It From The Engineer
Shelley J Alongi

 

Now as we part ways for who knows how long, I turn and walk back to the other side of the tracks, regaling railfans and foamers and anyone who will listen In the distance, the train pulls out of the station, not taking my heart, but leaving fond memories. Another engineer already took my heart. He won’t give it back.

On a comfortably cool Friday evening, January 6, the humming of train 642’s engine drifting across the platform, one track away, on a bench, a cold, hard metal bench with a history, I place my red backpack, the replacement for my beloved railroad grip back in Montana, having lost the battle with the unraveling threads. Tonight the engineer leaves me here, returning to his locomotive to get his rule book out of his grip or off his seat, wherever he has placed his railroad Bible, bringing it back to the bench, holding a pen in hand. This bench with its metal slats and arms, slatted back, placed parallel to track 3 sits feet from where my number 1 engineer, the right one, drew his train to a stop, giving me two minutes of his time for six months, and now whee others bring their loads to rest, hailing me from cab windows or ignoring me. This man doesn’t’ hail me from his cab window. He doesn’t ignore me. He takes his pen and writes my phone number and email address on his coveted book, and returns to his train, his conductor having left us to take care of his own business.

“It was nice meting you,” he says, he has to go and call his wife and say goodnight to his 7 and 9 year-old children.

“That’s nice,” I tell the man whose name is James, not Dave, as I once thought. James is a little taller than me, not six feet, average build, his conductor an energetic bean pole. James probably whers his blue and white Metrolink uniform, he does wear a comfortable-looking sweat shirt to protect his average build against our California winter weather. I wear my black slacks and white sweater, short-sleeved, my mauve jacket resting in my backpack.

“Where are we going?” i ask my newest man of the railroad an hour earlier as we stand at the end of his train toward the cab car, the locomotive stretching far away from us. “Don Carlo? Are we going to cut across the tracks?”

“No. We’re going to this Mexican restaurant. Do you like Mexican food?

Do I like it? That’s an understatement. I’ve given up one Mexican restaurant because I thought the waitress was rude one too many times even if the food is outstanding; I used to make another one my hangout when I lived in Fullerton, and I have two or three favorites around the area, so Mexican food, Mr. Engineer number 5, is just fine!

I’llt ake it! We make our way to a small Mexican market with the enticing name of La Halizco market.

“I hope they take a debit card,” I tell him as we walk across the platform, down the stairs and across the south side of paradise to the restaurant.

I usually walk unaided but tonight, given the time crunch, the freight trains, and maybe just because he’s the engineer, I ask if I can walk with him. He obliges and so here we are, the star struck railfan and the engineer side by side, heading over to meet the man who teases my number 3 engineer about anything and everything.

“They’re strictly cash,” he says. “But we’ll take care of you!:

Oh dear, I smile, “I didn’t’ want this to happen” I say. Now I guess I really am gold digging! Guess I got an engineer’s money, after all; it was well worth it, let me tell you. It wasn’t my number one engineer, but I’ll take it. Welcome, James, to my vastly growing railroad pool of people who run trains, my new social set; my connections with tons of warm-hearted, unforgiving steel and lots of information about them. I’ll get dinner with my number 1 engineer, don’t’ worry. Tonight, I’ll take this! It’s a start in the right direction, a sign that I have made progress from the girl in the corner wanting to talk to these people and learn their stories, to the middle-aged woman eating Mexican food and shooting the breeze, and not so nervous I can’t function. Tonight, I do just fine.

I reflect as we walk to our little restaurant that I wasn’t going to come here tonight. I’ve been here two or three times and I don’t’ have cab fare home. But leaving work I decide that if I have to wait an hour and a half for a bus connection I’ll do it. I’m ready to go to the station tonight again and see the big crowd, watch the train rituals, and endeavor to meet the engineer on 689.

The clock points to 6:15 and I wait for Carey, learning tonight that he has one daughter.

“I don’t’ have any kids,” I tell him.

“No kids?”

“No, I haven’t found the man I want to wake up with,” I say.

“That’s important,” he says, and our conversation ends. As he smoothly pulls 606 away and does his running break test, I make my way to the end of the platform and retrace my steps to the gap in the brick wall, straight ahead of the Metrolink ramp, giving me a straight shot between safety line and wrought iron fence to the place where the locomotive will come to rest. Thursday night I’ve come up here, sitting alone in the silence, walking the platform, reaching out to touch the steel of my despised MPI. Even if it is an engine from the Boise Locomotive Company, it Is a locomotive and with no crew in sight, I’ve just missed them, and no Amtrak agent around, I walk to the edge and touch it.

“You know a lot of the engineers?” says the Amtrak agent to me, Matthew, the night before, that would be Wednesday, as I leave Carey’s train. Carey hasn’t talked much tonight; he has to talk to dispatch and then they are gone, but he says hello and goodbye, it is enough.

“I don’t know all of them,” I say, wondering is it so obvious? I guess it is. Matthew has come to me a few days earlier as I’m on track 4 asking if I want to catch the Amtrak train.

“No,” I say. Well, 784 is late and some people get that platform mixed up with track 3’s platform, so he’s just doing his job by asking; it’s okay. Another woman on one of those nights tries to reach out and touch me as I walk near the safety line. I push her away; no one invades my personal space. But tonight there is no agent, there is no helpful passenger or in this case, a woman heading with a bicycle to the parking lot, there is just me and the shining locomotive and the railfans across the platform. I make my way to the bench, yes another cold hard metal bench, warmth in my heart; I am here, I have had another successful work day, and now it is time to just talk to one of my many engineers. It’s been a successful week in most cases. I’ve tried to make contact with the engineer on 689 with no success, but give it time, it will happen. Now, Friday, I sit and wait with plenty of time to spare, confident in my visual map. I know right where I am and who I want to meet.

The train backs in, the locomotive sits right here, I wait, happy, no expectations, only just taking joy from the train and its engineer. It’s always about the engineer; the story, the connection to the rails.

He gets out of his cab and turns and looks at me.

“Do you want to go to lunch with us today?”

I’m not nervous at all. I save my heart palpitations for Glenn.

“Okay,” he says. “Go to the end of the train where Eddie the conductor is and wait for us.”

I get up, obedient; my mother would be so proud. If an engineer tells me what to do I might just do it. I do engineer homework the next day, but that’s for another story. Tonight it’s all about lunch with this engineer.

“Eddie knows about it.”

Now, outside on the patio, beside the barbecue, the sizzle of coldmeat hitting a hot grill, Eddie the conductor sits across from me, entertaining someone with little English and alternately teasing me about using boby’s password to access union information on the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen’s web site.

“Are you going?” james inquires when I tell him I want to go to the Union meeting in Montana. Yes. No one has ever told me not to go.

“I’m just fascinated with running the train I want to know about operations. They tell me I’ll be bored,” I say to James, number 5 on my dance card now.

“You can get agreements online,” says the engineer, sitting next to me, eating a seviche tostada, my own plate filled with an amazingly brown and beautiful quesadilla with el pastor and grilled onions, and the biggest can of Mucho Mango ice tea you’ve ever seen, well, maybe not the biggest.

“This will take me a year to drink,” I tease, trying to give as good as I get. Most of the teasing is done by the conductor, he’s done this for two weeks, from the moment when this star struck railfan wanted to meet the crew on this train, with eyes for the engineer, my connection to the rails.

“It’s railroader’s size,” someone says, or maybe both of them. They’re teasing, of course, you can buy this size can in any convenience store, Arizona brand ice tea comes in this tall cylinder. Today that can, flattened by slamming against a wall when the slab train comes through, knocking it from the platform, now sits on my table, a cherished momento of tonight’s meeting.

The catalyst for this meeting occurs one night this week as I come to track 4 and sit closer to the end where I wait for James to finish his business. I’ve discovered that if I walk to the end of the platform on track 3 and go back to the gap that I’m beyond the ADA ramp closer to the locomotive. But tonight I’m nearer the ramp and now the train approaches. I sit with my hands in my lap, knowing I’ll miss him. Eddie puts the ramp down for whomever might wish it, his passengers filing off the train, walking to the parking lot, or over to track 3 or across the tracks, using the elevator. So, I think, sitting here, ther are people who ride this train! Of course there are, but some of these trains disgorge many passengers, including the 708 whose engineer still doesn’t talk to me.

“It’s not that we’re being rude,” James explains later, “But we’re looking down the track.”

It’s okay. They don’t have to talk to me. Carey, Glenn, bobby, and several others have talked to me. I know they all see me. I think sometimes I just stand back to far, especially at the 3 car marker where the Riverside train rests. Sometimes the engineers talk to me from this train, but not since Glenn left it a year and a half ago. Was it that long already?

No matter.
There are a lot of people to watch, I suppose, holding black and maroon cell phones or briefcases, wearing baseball caps, holding ernest conversations with themselves or unseen partners, taking rhythmic steps, heels clacking on cobblestones, sneakers swishing across the same paths, the tinkling elevator bell signaling its use by those who have been lucky enough to catch it. Feet clop across stairs, over the bridge onto their lives and here I sit, just waiting.

The crowd slowly moves away from train 642’s secluded quietness.

“Ut oh, look who’s here!” ejaculates the conductor. He’s talking about me, of course. He’s always doing that. I don’t know what he says tonight, it was probably about bobby. Another figure joins him.

“I’ll go order?” he says.

Its him! I’m ecstatic. The figure turns and walks toward the fence that separates the platform from the street below.

Where are you going?” I call after him. He turns and looks over his shoulder.

“Pizza!’ he says cheerfully.

“Pizza?”

“Yeah.”

Ok he’s probably a youngish guy, I don’t know, but I’ll take him.

“You’re not going to Don Carlo?”

“No. sometimes we go to the little Mexican restaurant across the road,” he says looking at me. He knows me. Friday he asked me if I was looking for the train.

“I was wondering,” I say now, having thought of this all day, “If I could go with you guys some time.”

What have I said? Why not? They can say no can’t they?

Early in the morning I’ve told a colleague at work I’m going to take your polite request anduse it on this train crew, may I join you? She always says when approaching a table full of lunching reservation sales agents. Maybe it will work. I think they’ll let you go to lunch with them, says Curtis, the homeless bus driver on the bus dock when I tell him my plan a few days earlier.

What comes out of my mouth didn’t exactly sound like that, but it got the engineer’s attention. He stands and looks at me, maybe curious, maybe not.

“I don’t think that would be a problem,” he says. “I don’t’ think Eddie would mind. We’ll get together and hook up.”

I know it won’t be tonight. Tonight is only the foray; the exploration. Will you, won’t you?

“Okay,” I now say, happy inside. Dinner with the train crew? For two weeks I’ve wanted to meet this engineer. The conductor breaks the ice, I guess. He teases me, he protects his engineer from the hogger stocker, he teases me mercilessly about bobby, or does he tease bobby?

“Well have a good night,” I say, mimicking all my other engineers, and the exchange ends, the engine hums, the tracks stretch out beneath the train, and I sit here. They disappear across the tracks, through the parking lot and over to NYPD Pizza, Curt says, it’s the closest pizza place here. Curt has told me about it about two years ago and if I want to know anything I ask him, but no one can figure out what restaurant the engineer, James, is talking about.

“He’ must not be from around here,” I tell the fans on the other side. “He says the place is a hole in the wall.”

There ar a a lot of those around here and they’re all yummy!

Tonight, Friday, we sit here, talking, enjoying the food.

“I didn’t catch yourname,” says James to me. I have to laugh. Here I’ve invited myself along to eat with the crew, I’ve sat by the locomotive and the train cars and he doesn’t know my name. That’s my fault, I suppose. I always wondered if Glenn knew my name. Ah, Glenn knows my name and that’s the other amazing part of today’s adventure, a huge milestone on Shelley’s railroad journey.

“what’s up Terry,” Glenn calls down from his cab once.

“Terry?” Haha, no sweet engineer, but I’l take you.

Tonight the engineer doesn’t know my name; he only knows I want to go to dinner with him. Now how’s that for being forward? I’m not shy! I don’t’ think Glenn thinks I’m shy! I’m not really shy; just reserved, sometimes, till I kno what I want. Tonight I want dinner with a train crew. And here I am.

“Have you been in a cab?” James asks, digging into his tostada. My gently grilled quesadilla rests in my hand.

“Yeah. But not a real one.”

Ok that’s not quite true. Not the big railroad, I say, or do I? For someone who wasn’t nervous, maybe I was? The engineer is my escort of sorts, I’m not going to be nervous.

“The freights will take you,” he says, “if you contact them. I think they will.”

“well, I’ll sign anything,” I tell him. “I have good insurance. I work for Disney.”

“You work for Disney Land?”

You run the train? I think. The excitement matches. Cool. You work for Disney! Cool, you run the train!
“Yeah,” Isay, glad to be affirmed by another one. He doesn’t know I know more about the railroad than most people, like my number one engineer does, but he knows I work for Disney.

“My wife has an annual pass. She goes there all the time.”

“I can give you tickets!”

Am I bribing the engineer?

“My kids would like that. I might take you up on that!”

“I’ll give you my contact information,” I say. Wow this time I haven’t had to plan for this moment; to compete with special freights coming through the station or find a stylus or anything. If I give him my number, can I get his? I have to tell you I’ve never worked so hard to court any group’s favor. But I’m working on it.

“She chases engineers,” Robert the attorney tells one group of fans.

I don’t deny it. They take pictures, lining up their tripods on the safety line. They post them on the internet. I talk to engineers; they run trains. Trains and the stories, they are connected.

“You email?” James asks me when I tell him I can give him my number or email or whichever he prefers.

One thing that’s refreshing about these engineers is that I think most of them haven’t met blind people before, they don’t know how I do things but they don’t ask me, they just expect me to do it. They have enough complications of their own and things to do they don’t’ need to think about how I do my job or text or whatever I think I have to do. Maybe only one engineer was nervous about me being by the tracks when an approaching freight train was close, and if these are, they don’t say anything to me. Maybe they just figure I’m smart enough to figure it out by myself.

“She gets around good,” one says on his way to Barstow.

I remember when I didn’t’ know where the tracks were; now five engineers have met me here, spent significant time talking to me, and at least ten others, not counting the ones who don’t know my name yet, have seen me in passing. I’ll take it; all of it.

I’ll take it from the engineer. He runs the train! He thinks it’s cool I work for Disney. Trade offs. I’ll take them!

This man’s story is that in 1993 he became a conductor on the BNSF out of San Bernardino. Glenn worked out of San Bernardino, in those days it was the Santa Fe. In 1998 james ran trains and he doesn’t have enough seniority to work Orange county he says, but he ends up on the Riverside or San bernardino line.

“I’m 40 miles from Ocean Side and 42 miles from River Side,” he says.

Well,that answers the question about him not being from around here. His phone number is the same area code as Glenn’s. Do I keep comparing him to glenn?

He’s energetic and friendly, but no man is Glenn, locomotive engineer or not. Still, here we are, the conductor sitting here, maybe watching.

“I’m going to tell Bobby, he’s going to be so jealous!” he informs me. “I’m going to call him tomorrow. And if I were his conductor you tell Joe his conductor he’s not a real engineer, if I were his conductor I’d work him hard, up early, work him late.”

“Oh give him a break,” I implore with humor. “He has kids.”

Somehow we discuss Bobby.

“The first time I talked to him he said he was taking time off to get married.”

“That’s his second one,” James tells me.

“Well I told Glenn I wasn’t here to cause trouble,” I say. “When I go to a cab I always assume they are married.” I just want to meet these people, find out what they’re like, and pick their brains. So far, so good.

We discuss Glenn, of course.

“Glenn the conductor?” he asks.

“No. glenn the engineer!”

“He has a complicated life,” I tell them.

“He does,” responds James. “But he has the most seniority.”

“I know,” I gush. Don’t I know it. He left me crying on the platform and comes back to me. I don’t tell them that, of course. They’ll find out soon enough.


I’m blushing. Glowing, Curt would say. Don’t’ be Jelous Mr Low time engineer, Glenn hasn’t taken me to dinner, or at least paid for it. No. Glenn has only spent hours with me satiating my absolute curiosity, putting up with my heavy handed texting and frantic, dramatic calls. Swee Glenn, you have no idea!

“He’s been helpful,” I say, and that’s an understatement if I ever made one. This man is a little quieter, I’d say a lot quieter, but kind of intrigued I think.

He does share a commitment to work like glenn does, with one notable difference. He says he wants to be home with his kids.

It seems tonight that I’ve caught this engineer in time. If I’ll take it from the engineer, the railroad is taking him from me…again. This would be my second loss to the railroad shuffle. I barely got to meet him and he’s off this line.

“What route will you take?” I now want to know.

“I don’t’ know I have to talk to my wife,” he says. Men always have to talk to their wives. It’s fine. She is a teacher’s aid, he says, she’s home, she’s around for the kids, and they still have to talk about it. Wonder if Glenn talks about it with his wife? Maybe they just argue! My sweet engineer and his wife with 22 cats. Somehow I don’t think this one has 22 cats. Wow, Glenn sure set the bar high! I’ll take all of it! Cats, kids, wives, hours, money, now, I guess, and information. I’ll take it all from the engineer.

“Every job goes up for bid every six months,” he says. You have 48 hours to make your move. The engineer on the train calls and says he’s bidding off the line and then the others who have lined up for a chance, make their move, something like that. I’ll have to figure that one out again; it will be another question for Glenn.

“Who’s taking your place?”

He questions his conductor, they think it’s Pat, the former engineer on this line, it’s only been in operation since July.

“maybe when your kids are eighteen and twenty you can go back and work more hours,” I suggest. Maybe he can work longer, harder hours since he seems to enjoy it. This man has his own story, I’m sure in eleven years he will decide how much he wants to work. He will have choices, it seems. I hope I know him in eleven years. I met, it seems, another quality engineer.

 “SO I’ve never been able to figure out what the 900 line is,” I tell him. We’re still sitting here. James shares his food with me; seems like Eddie just ordered to much.

“Burbank,” he says. The airport runs Glenn hated. At least that’s what a Metrolink agent said. Guess I’ll have to ask him about that one, too. He says he’s the number 1 engineer, he gets the best job, guess that one wasn’t the best. No, it wasn’t.

This man tells me that if you run the 300 line you get a 900 on your line, that’s how they split it up. So I did learn something today; always so much to learn. These guys are so giving, and I’ll take it.

 “Well we should be getting back,” says James to his conductor and we’re off, back across the stairs, over to the cold, hard bench, my hunger satiated, and my heart warmed.

It is now that we stand here, the man with the skill set I admire holding his rule book.

“So can I have your contact information or no?” I’m always giving people a way out. But if I don’t ask now I’ll never know.

“How are you going to read it?”

Good question. I’m kind of lazy. I have my stylus but I’d rather just hav him write it.

“Write it down. Do you have paper?”

No, this is when he tells me he has his rule book. TE standing next t me holding his rule book and I don’t even ask to see it, I text my number 1 engineer later. But now, I dig through my bag and find paper. He writes his number on it, and his name, and tells me the number.

“Don’t forget me,” I say, not sure why I say that.

“Do you have people ask if they can go to dinner with you?” I ask Eddie earlier.

“No, we keep a low profile.”

I’m sure the man who may end up on theSan Bernardino or River Side line won’t forget me.

“I won’t,” he says. I won’t forget him. Maybe he’s emphasized family to me to discourage any idea of flirtation, I always think of that, but like I say earlier, I’m not here to cause trouble, just to meet people who run the train. It’s interesting that he initiated the interaction and he sat next to me and paid attention to me. He wasn’t overwhelming, I just thought it was cool how he did that. I’ll take it

Riding on a crest of happiness I finish out my evening, a large crowd gathers tonight watching trains. I order an Italian cream soda, talk to Lena, take a phone call from a troubled friend, sit on my perch, catch Jeff up on my night and introduce him to the Redoxx site. Mel, the late Mo’s husband, is here tonight. Brett and his group do their ritual dances. Life goes on; it’s all in the rhythm of the station, and I’ve met another quality engineer.

At abou 10:00 pm, as train 645 leaves Fullerton, yes that’s james and Eddie’s train on its way to ocean Side, I get a ride home from Lena, Danny’s mom, saving me a long bus trip. It has been a good night.

Now as we part ways for who knows how long, I turn and walk back to the other side of the tracks, regaling railfans and foamers and anyone who will listen In the distance, the train pulls out of the station, not taking my heart, but leaving fond memories. Another engineer already took my heart. He won’t give it back.

 

 

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