Storymania - She Likes Trains: The Engineer Who Saved The Day by Shelley Alongi

She Likes Trains: The Engineer Who Saved The Day (2)
Shelley Alongi

“He says merry Christmas! It doesn’t get any more technical than that!”

“You’re obsessed with Glenn!” drunk Mike whines on Sunday as we’re down at the east end of the platform. “Get over it!” I just laugh. Mike whines when he’s been drinking. I may be obsessed with Glenn but Glenn hasn’t run away. I think he has other things on his mind, really. I’m happy. It’s a cool part of my railroad journey. It can only get better from here.

It certainly gets interesting if anything. The cat box discussion is ended, Robert leaves to go home and eat dinner, and Mike heads down to the east end to look at the red signals, signals which are not approach lit. Southern Pacific was big on that, Dave says, lighting the signals when a train is on its way instead of this continual lighting, red if nothing is in sight. Train watchers find trains by signals or computer. It works. Tonight, Sunday, they’re red, they pick up later.

“What are you doing down here?”

It’s a stranger, well not a stranger, really, it is Mike from Victorville.

“Sitting.”

“By yourself?”

“Yes. I like it down here. People aren’t down here asking me if I’m sitting by myself.”

Mike from Victorville laughs.

“Well they’ll be down herein a couple of minutes.”

He laughs and walks toward the café. He doesn’t sit down here with us. There are definitely different groups of people and they all have their own personalities. It’s what keeps coming back to the station interesting, oh, and the trains, too.
He’s talking about Dave, of course, and he does show up, eventually, I don’t remember if it was before 4 or after. I take time to text Norm my BNSF engineer. “Are you coming to the station?” No, he says. Well, merry Christmas, I say. I guess there won’t be any engineer stories tonight. Same to you, he responds and it’s back to red signals. I don’t even remember what I eat for dinner, tonight. Is it something from the café? No, I don’t think so. Maybe there’s something in my bag. I don’t remember. No matter. MaybeI wait till I get home. Time passes. They’re going to extend the platform on the west end and build a staircase from the parking structure on harbor down to it so commuters can more easily reach the station. Mike says this, pointing out that they’ve scooped the ballast. Diesel Dave is here, too, now, but he hasn’t been given any orders for food from his wife. It’s all good, and still not many freights. There are the P-42s on the Amtrak sets, and the red signals.

Freight traffic is so light that the conversation turns to food, and somehow to food poisoning. Dave had salmonella once, he says, eating at a Colony Kitchen. Okay now we’re bored! Someone please bring us a freight train! Please! I am begging some unknown dispatcher to take this conversation somewhere else. The arrival of a freight train can always put conversation in a different direction. Dave says he lay in his sleeping bag and decided this wasn’t going away. “I puked on the platform” he says, Doug starts in with his nausea routine, it’s all very down the toilet, so to speak.

Suddenly, the train gods here me! The horn on an approaching freight gets our attention. We look up. The light is green. It’s a westbound! It approaches, heavy, sweetly noisy, clattering as the cars switch onto the fullerton track, those metal wheels finding their grooves, comforting me.

Did you shit your pants?” Mike does ask strange questions.

“Well,” says Dave and the engineer’s hand, flipping that switch hides the answer. He blows that horn, all hail that hand hitting the switch. High up in his cab, looking at whatever he’s looking at down here or up there, whatever he does, whether he’s married or single or both, divorced, in between, can’t make up his mind, broke, sick, well, love struck, bored out of his mind, sleepy, wide-eyed, hates his job, loves trains, has a grandson he’s doting on, whatever and whoever he is, he saves the day! His hand breaks up the conversation, forever endearing my nameless hero to me. I clap my hands and laugh. Yes! Thank you train gods! Sweet engineer, you are my hero! Don’t’ know his name, don’t need to know it, all I need to know is he saved the day! Whew, that was a close one! I laugh. He disappears, the conversation ends, the pens write down the numbers, and life goes on. I sit on my perch now, John having camped there, hiding it from me, and breathe a huge sigh of relief. Mike leaves us shortly after the engineer does. Allen shows up. The conversation turns to a T shirt he is wearing that says “Great Scott” all based on a bus driver’s thinking his name is Scott in Ireland, something he answered to. It also turns to locomotives. Gee Sd70s, GP 9s not to be confused with Gee 9, F7s, 1500 horse power. My despised MPIS, MP36 is more powerful than my sweet EMDs. Really? The engines always sound like they’re falling apart! They load slow, says Bobby. Whatever! I still don’t’ like them! But then I’m not the one operating them. It all makes me want to go home and look up locomotives, again. Some are flat, some have a more sloping front. They can’t see me when I’m in front of them, I say. No, Dave says, but sometimes when it’s a cold night it sure feels good standing right there where that exhaust is, or air, whatever they call it. The guy running the train probably doesn’t want to see me there. I come back to the window, but that is the locomotive sweet spot, at least for me. If he can’t see out the windows, sometimes you can’t see till you’re over that part of the track, Glenn says, then I’ll stay by the window. I think my next group of people to talk to is the mechanics, if we can find a good one. Deferred maintenance has locomotives breaking down, there’s always something going on with Metrolink, at least. No wonder they have restrooms in those cabs, or bring food with them. Maybe they’ll have to eat their own lunch out on the line waiting for someone to bring another engine or do whatever they do. Who runs the trains if, say the crew gets sick on the line, I say. The conversation may be disgusting, it is an interesting question. Guess you just improvise, or wait. Like Jason the railroad blogger says, if you are stranded on the line that railroad grip may be what you’re counting on for support.

Tonight, Sunday, the conversation entertaining, the information comes in waves, and soon it is time to go. But on Tuesday, when the church group comes down here, there is more at the planter. It’s a strange day, the diet Pepsi calls, Dave sees me twenty minutes after I get there, he says maybe his eyes are getting old, no matter. We’re all here. Allen and Gen show up; we eat cookies. Curt shows up, too, Dave says Curt is showing off his rubber ball that lights up.

“Did he tell you where he got that?”

“No, he doesn’t usually tell,” he says.

“I gave it to him,” I say. If they want one, I tell curt later, they should go get their own. They’re at J.C. Penney.

Gen and Allen and Dave huddle around the cookie tin that comes out of the railroad bag.

“Cookies, ice-cream, and locomotive engineers. My favorite things,” Say, “oh yeah, and cats.”

“Cat cookies and engineer syrup!” says Gin. Where does it come from? We don’t really want to know.

“The engineer pumper,” she says.

“The throttle, of course.”

“Yum.”

I’m laughing for hours. It’s all crazy!

It’s all part of the railroad thing, I guess. Can’t be academic all the time! Probably don’t’ want to know what train crews talk about but I’m sure, if I’m around long enough, I’ll find out, too. Maybe I’ll find out in Montana. Yes, that’s my big plan. I’m making plans to go to a Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and trainmen meeting in Montana in July. I haven’t’ taken a trip out of state for a while and Redoxx, the maker of my railroad bag is there. So I’ll take a trip to see them and maybe have them look at the bag since some of the threads keep coming lose. This bag is incredible and it’s holding up so I don’t want to send it back, quite yet. But I do want to see the makers of my bag. They seem very nice and very customer oriented. So now the cat, is out of the bag.

“How am I going to introduce myself to them?” I wonder.

“Just show up in the middle of them and say I’m here!” says Allen.

“Go find where they get drunk after the meetings and they’ll tell you stories,” Dave says.

Yeah, I bet they will.

“You’re going to pass out,” says Dave, he thinks the meetings will be so dry. Maybe. Maybe not. I’m interested in agreements and such, we’ll see. What I really want, along with all of it, are stories! Maybe they can tell me stories about saving someone’s day on the platform. Two engineers already said they left people standing in Laguna, blowing the horn, because they weren’t at the right end of the track to catch the train.

“If they’re standing at the other end,’ I interject into their conversation. “They deserve to be left!”

Ok so maybe I can do this thing! Wonder what other stories I’ll write about that trip. I don’t know, but I am sure there will be plenty more stories before then.

“You’re not going to be able to get them all down,” Dave says to me. They’ll have to carry me out on a stretcher I’ll be so excited. We shall see about all of that!

Before that, there will be all kinds of stories to tell and maybe there will be another engineer to save the day.

But apparently I do a little day saving of my own on Tuesday. I hear a woman ask someone if they have a lighter. We usually don’t talk to the others unless they came down to the east end of the platform. Tonight she has either caught a train, or is catching one, or just needs a lighter. The person tells her no. She approaches us.

“Do you have a lighter?” she asks Dave. No, he doesn’t.

“I think I do,” I say distractedly looking in one of the six pockets on my bag. Strangely enough, I think I do have one. I don’t smoke, I never use a lighter, but five months ago when I planned my birthday party I bought a lighter for candles since the store didn’t have any matches. There are two lighters in a pack. I reach into my bag and pull out an Anaheim Fairfield Inn lunch bag. I have all kinds of bags in my bag. She talks to someone and looks as I extend a package to her.

“Here. I thought I had one!”

“Can I buy this from you?”

“No. No. keep it I bought it to light candles.”

Dave is laughing, a little stunned, I think. This railroad grip holds everything! It’s my sixteen hour day bag, I say. My sister’s husband thinks I’m crazy carrying it. Whatever. He doesn’t have my life! This is the best bag, ever. I’ve had it five months and I can’t separate from it. It’s a great bag. Now it holds something someone needs.

“I’ll contribute to your death by cigarette,” I say. She is grateful.

So it has been this week about locomotives, teasing, laughter, phone calls, the little bag of tricks, and the engineer who saved the day.

The day ends on quite a different note as I call a cab home. I’m always prepared to pay the fare, it’s my indulgence, I gladly pay it so I can stay later and leave after the last Amtrak does, or stay even longer. The driver asks me if I can see. No, I said, but I’ve seen the world. I don’ know why I say that; I’ve been a lot of places. I’ve been to Mississippi, Chicago, not by train, I’ve been to new York, Oregon, Washington, D.C., Pensylvania, West Virginia, and now I’m about to go to Montana. I’ve been in small planes and now I’ve been to the side of a locomotive cab. Perhaps the locomotive cabs are my favorite places. As we pull into the driveway I get my card out to pay the driver.

“No, I don’t want any money,” he says. “Merry Christmas!”

This week, in the cold, among the switches and the bags, the cheeseburger and the diet Pepsi, it’s all about laughter, phone calls, teasing, my sweet glenn, the bag of tricks, and the engineer who saves the day! Sweet engineer, when that train whistle wails, when you make sweet music on the mainline rails, you don’t know how you rescue the conversation. All hail the hand on the switch!

Go to part: 1 2