As I may have mentioned before, I am on the extra board at Amtrak. This means sitting by the phone twice a day waiting for a phone call that will tell you whether you will be working the next day or not. Sometimes the call doesn't come. I certainly can't make many plans about later this week, or the day after tomorrow--unless of course, I've been given an assignment; then the plan is usually, "Sorry, I'll be in Reno (or Bakersfield) then."
It isn't anywhere as bad as it sounds. Everybody I work with is either doing the same or has done it--no exceptions. It's a phase you go through at the beginning of your career. It's never boring. You just plan your day and week around being by the phone from 7 to 9 every morning and evening. Every other plan you make is conditional: "If I don't have to work, you want to see a movie?" Millions of workers have similar situations.
Once in a while, though, Crew Management throws you a curve. I had been dutifully sitting by the phone--well, lying by it would be more accurate--and no call had come. I went out to get breakfast and returned just around 11 AM to find I had a message waiting. "Paul, all Shawn at Amtrak Crew Management. We want to put you on the Fun Train. Please call me back." This in itself is not that unusual; Crew Management usually handles assignments by calling during one's calling hours, but if they need to contact you other times, they will. So I called in and asked for Shawn.
I didn't get him--I got someone else. So I told him "Well, I think Shawn was trying to put me on the Fun Train." The Man I was speaking to said "Yes, but I also have an opening on the 712, and I have to fill that first. So you are assigned to the 712 tomorrow and your report time is 5 AM." I agreed--that's all one can do--and hung up.
I don't complain about my job. If the reader thinks I do, he or she has missed the whole point of these stories. I love my job, and there is always something good happening. It's just that things sometimes get a little weird out there. I relish weird. That is the spirit of these stories.
That said, let me explain the difference between the Fun Train and the 712. I like working both runs, but the Fun Train is a bigger plum. The Fun Train goes to Reno; the 712 goes to Bakersfield. The Fun Train goes up Friday night and comes back Sunday, allowing you a paid day between in which you can do as you like; the 712 goes to Bakersfield and back in one day, so you can only tale a nap between Bakersfield arrival and departure, and that only if the train isn't late. The Fun Train is two legs of about seven hours on two different days; the 712 requires one to report in at 5 AM and one is generally released just before 11 PM: a 17- or 18-hour day.
It isn't all one-sided, though. The passengers on the Fun Train do a lot of drinking and carrying on, while the 712 riders are less raucous. I had no real problems on the Fun Train, though one of my buddies had both her toilets in her car jam up, some one threw up in her vestibule, and two "ladies" got in a fist fight in her car. Such things seldom happen on the 712. The 712 also allows you to be go out and come home; it's really nice to sleep at home.
My point is this: I'll gladly work any run they give me, but the Fun Train and the 712 are very different.
So, I arrived at Oakland Crew Base (which I have yet to see in sunshine) and was dropped off by that most excellent of women, my fiancee, Sharon. I kissed her good-bye and reported in.
This is where it started to become weird.
I was supposed to be an extra person on the 712, but the regular folks really didn't need me. They were nice about it, but I got the feeling that they thought Crew Management was crazy to put on someone they didn't need. Michelle, the person handling such matters (it was her last day, too) told me. "Okay, Paul, you're not going on the 712. You are going on the Zephyr."
Well, I was somewhat alarmed by this. It wasn't that I don't like working the California Zephyr--it's my favorite run. It's wasn't that I don't like staying overnight in Reno--I do. It was just I was not prepared to be away overnight. I usually take a change of clothes, shaving kit, toothbrush, and some deodorant. I had none of this with me. I said "I don't even have a clean shirt for tomorrow." Michelle actually tried to find me one at the Crew Base, but no soap. So I called Sharon. She came out and got me and took me home so I could grab my bag (which is 90% ready to go at all times) and we even got to share tea, bagels, and a little time together before I had to report back at 7:45 AM. The best part was I got paid for the extra time.
Friday the 13th isn't so bad, I thought. But it was only early in the morning--the day was far from over.
The next helping of weird was when four large, scruffy-looking guys got on the train. They looked a little like the guys in a bar fight scene in any Clint Eastwood movie taking place in the contemporary era, only a lot more clear-eyed. But the scruffy was, on second glance, only on the surface. Their leader came up to me and said "Okay if we take a look through your car?"
What was I going to say? Who were these guys? I asked the conductor, who seemed familiar with them. "Task Force," he replied--DEA Agents looking for drug mules who, unfortunately, sometimes use Amtrak to transport drugs.
I have seen DEA check us out before, sometimes using dogs. Often they have been alerted by the ticket personnel that a passenger fits the drug mule profile: a last-minute ticket paid for in cash, a bag they will not leave, and so on. Yes, in today's world you are suspect if you pay in cash. Solid citizens pay 18 percent interest on all their purchases.
But on this particular day, the agents were just prowling the car talking to anybody who caught their eye. Their idea of a "profile" seemed to be "anyone Black or Hispanic." They asked a lot of questions of one Hispanic-looking man dressed very neatly in black with a well-trimmed goatee, a flat-top haircut, and dark glasses. After chatting with him a while, they moved on.
"What happened?" I asked him.
"Routine check," he said. "They were nice. They weren't giving me a hard time. They just want everybody to see them checking people randomly. It's a deterrent."
"I know it would deter me."
It turned out that this young man was a intelligent and gentlemanly schoolteacher from Denver. Two of the Agents stopped by on their way back and chatted with him again, completely socially this time. The Task Force got off in Sacramento.
Weird, but nothing wrong yet...
Every time I go to the airport or even think of flying, I am extremely grateful that I work for Amtrak. It's because we don't fly, sure, but it's also because we don't have to assign seats, or make sure everyone has their trays locked, their seat backs in the upright position, or their seatbelts fastened (we don't have seatbelts). Mostly, I'm grateful that on trains there aren't as many rules for the passengers as on planes, because I don't have to spend all my time enforcing rules and making myself unpleasant and resented. Other than occasionally asking someone not to do something that is hazardous, the only rules I ask my passengers to follow are the following:
Simple, no? Rule 1 is much more liberal that on the airlines. Some of our trains have smoking rooms, some don't, but on the runs without we will let you get off and smoke at designated stops. Rule 2 is just common sense. Rules 3 through 5 aren't really rules; they are requests we make so that we can make sure the right people get off the train at the right stops. Period. If someone breaks these "rules," the only consequence is that the person responsible misses their stop. This is called a "carryby." This is where Friday the 13th finally got us. I had my first carryby.
When we stop to pick up passengers, we ask them to stay in their coach seats until the conductor has taken their tickets. Most will, but others will immediately hie themselves off to the lounge car, returning only just before their station stop. Some don't even do that; they will be found trying to force open the door in the lounge car, shouting "I gotta get off!"
Just for the record, we try to avoid stress in our passengers. Usually we ask where they are going, and then send them to a certain car based on that. We do this not to be dictatorial, but for practical reasons. For example, the station at platform at Suisun-Fairfield is extremely short--half the length of the train, in fact--and construction on it has reduced the usable platform area to a very small area. We need to have all our Suisun-Fairfield passengers on one car--the car that we bring up to that small, usable portion of platform. Still, when we tell a passenger that Suisun-Fairfield people have to go to a certain car, they sometimes question why. Maybe they resent being told where to go. Maybe they think we're handing out free beer and prostitutes on the other cars, and they don't want to miss out. Maybe Americans have a healthy tendency to resist. I don't know.
Another thing people do is tell us the wrong destination. For example, a Roseville passenger will tell us "Sacramento" when we ask where he is going. When we point out that his ticket says "Roseville" he will reply (rather sharply) "They're very close together. It's the same area." I've also been told that Suisun and Martinez are the same. I always point out that we're not asking what town, but what station they want. They sometimes helps, but not always.
On this particular Friday the 13th, here's what happened. We had eight passengers for Truckee, though we did not know it. (For those of you unfamiliar with the geography, Truckee is the stop just before Reno--about an hour away.) Three of them never let us collect their tickets--straight to the bar car is my guess. Another five sat in their seats in the right car, got their seat checks, and everything. Then three of them, a couple and their infant son, got up and moved to another car, leaving their seat checks over their seats. This was perfectly fine. The seat checks let me know that I had five for Truckee in my car: two there and three elsewhere. The system was working. When we got to Truckee, we had still not found out about our three invisible friends in the bar car. No tickets were collected from them, so we had no idea they were Truckee passengers. When we got to Truckee, they came to the proper car to detrain. I had a count of five passenger for Truckee. Five got off. Perfect!
Except it wasn't. The couple with the child were on another car, waiting for someone to open the door for them. Nobody did. Why not? Well, as far as we knew:
Three or four minutes after we left Truckee, The couple (with child in arms) came trooping into the proper car. "We were waiting," the man said. "Why didn't anybody open the door fro us?"
"Eep! Ahh! Where were you?" I explained, helpfully.
"We were on the other car."
"We didn't open that on at Truckee!"
"I know."
At this point the gentleman's wife--quite angry--said, "My child is hungry! I need to use my breast pump and I need to get to a drugstore!" (The part about the breast pump was way more than I needed or wanted to know.) She started to tell me how stupid the whole situation was and how incompetent Amtrak was in general. She started in on my failings as a human being but caught herself and asked what I was going to do about the situation.
"Well, Ma'am, if you like, you can yell at me--or you can let me call the conductor and we'll see what we can do."
She settled down immediately. I called the conductor on the intercom and explained the problem. He said he'd find out what he could do.
I need to point out that both the gentleman and the lady were very nice people. Other than a little flare-up on her part, prompted no doubt by panic, they were very polite. The hardest part of the whole exercise was when the gentleman asked me why the whole thing had happened. I tried to explain it, but I had a little trouble making him understand that it was caused by his going to the wrong door. Finally, I just explained it as a miscount, which was partly true, and blamed it all on the other passengers. There was no way I was going to get him to see his part in the mishap without offending him, and there was no real reason why I had to.
The conductor came to my car and told me his solution to the problem. I liked it. He told me to tell the passengers, which was nice of him, since I got to be the one to make them happy.
"Sir, Ma'am, you're in luck. Train 5, the westbound Zephyr, is very late. The conductor radioed in and found out it just left Reno a short while ago. We are going to rendezvous with it, transfer you over, and then they'll carry you back to Truckee. You'll only be about an hour late, but you'll still have time to get to a drugstore and--do--whatever else you need to do."
I got a couple of very broad and very genuine smiles for that.
A few minutes later, the couple, their child, their luggage, and the conductor and I were all gathered my the downstairs vestibule. The conductor opened the window and stuck his head out, talking on the radio to the engineers. We drew up to Train 5, already stopped and waiting for us. "Three cars...Two cars...one car. Good!"
We had drawn up with just twelve feet between to two doors. I dropped down, set my stepbox, and handed the lady and gentleman down. I then reached in and got their bags, and carried them over, the track ballast crunching beneath my boots. A Train Attendant like me had already handed the folks up into his car. He took the bags from me and put handed them to his partner inside. We shook hands, then I went back to my door, threw my stepbox in, and scrambled up into the train. Once I was in, the conductor spoke into his radio, "Number Six--Highball!" The engine gave two great hoots in response and we started moving. I waved to my opposite number, and then shut the door.
Moments like that are what I love about my job.
I was tired when we got to Reno. I showered, went out for a simple dinner, and came back early.
"No gambling tonight?" the desk clerk asked me.
"Are you kidding? It's deadsville out there. Friday the 13th, you know!"
Copyright © 1998, 2003 Paul C. Pinkosh
Revised--May 6, 2003
URL: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Station/1178
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