UNION STATION : Memories of a fading era live on where a sarcastic Ronald Reagan gave an opinion, where John Madden gives directions--and where untidy pigeons leave their mark.

An old Chinese man used to come and sit in the north patio years ago, just kind of stare into space. It turned out he’d been born here--on the property. Before the train station was built, this was part of Chinatown. He said he was born where the coffee shop is now. --Amtrak stationmaster Les Page There is a haunting quality to Union Station. The high ceilings are a part of it, as well as the vast halls with their many empty chairs and closed ticket booths, and the silence.

It’s so quiet that often the flapping wings of the resident pigeons can be heard on their hopeful sorties through the coffee shop.

Much of the interior, from the black walnut beams and the 3,000-pound chandeliers down to the marble mosaic walkway in the waiting room, remains remarkably intact after almost half a century.

“You can almost sense the presence of all the politicians and movie stars who’ve walked through here,” said CBS broadcaster and aerophobe John Madden, who says he rides 100,000 miles of rails some years.

The station’s dim lighting adds to the B-mystery-movie atmosphere. Not long ago, in fact, a ticket clerk recognized an escaped felon on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list--the FBI furnishes the station with photos--and the fugitive was arrested as he tried to board a train.

A few days later, recalled Jack Kinney, an Amtrak employee, “a guy came in off the street, kind of a funny look in his eye, and said, ‘I understand one of your ticket clerks turned in a guy. Which one of you was was it?’ It was kind of spooky.”

Transit projects seem to generate controversy in Los Angeles. Union Station, like the planned Metro Rail, was a project that was debated for years--for almost three decades, in fact.

Originally, the Southern Pacific, Union Pacific and Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroads had separate stations. In 1915, the city of Los Angeles proposed a new terminal for the three (hence the name “union”) to upgrade facilities and reduce the number of grade crossings on the streets.

After two court defeats, the railroads grudgingly agreed to pay for the construction, which took six years and cost $11 million (the amount currently budgeted for about 1 1/2 miles of track for Metro Rail).

To make room on the 48-acre site a few blocks northeast of City Hall, part of Chinatown was razed. Ironically, it was the Chinese who had built much of the railroad for meager wages.

Critics nicknamed the station’s architectural style “mission moderne.” The Spanish heritage was evident in its exterior design. Architects H. L. Gilman, J. H. Christie and R. J. Wirth created a Moorish clock tower, high-arched windows and slanted red tile roofs. The influence of consulting architects John and Donald Parkinson was reflected in the many Art Deco touches, such as the pencil Gothic sign work.

A half million people attended opening day ceremonies in 1939, which culminated with a historical parade featuring horsemen, mule-skinners, stagecoaches, horse cars, trolleys and an 1869 locomotive, the Southern Pacific’s Collis P. Huntington.

At first, more than 60 trains a day passed through the station. But railroading was already on the decline, and then came jet airliners and superhighways. One of the gloomiest phrases for a train man is “air mail.”

The station was down to nine trains a day by 1971 when the government-subsidized National Railroad Passenger Corp. (Amtrak) took over passenger operations at Union Station. The agency leased the facilities from Santa Fe Southern Pacific Corp., which controls 77% of the property through its two railroad subsidiaries, and Union Pacific, which owns the rest.

Rail service has increased somewhat. Union Station, now also a depot for Trailways buses, currently sees 18 trains (and about 7,000 passengers) a day. But the Reagan Administration has talked of eliminating Amtrak’s $600 million-plus subsidy, which would likely spell doom for the station.

Maybe it was only a coincidence, but stationmaster Les Page recalls a strained conversation he had with Reagan a quarter century ago.

“A lady needed help with her bags and Reagan was passing by,” he said. “He said I should help her. I told him that I was assistant stationmaster and because of union rules I couldn’t. I could go get someone but I couldn’t help her. He made a smart remark about that’s why the railroads were going out of business.”

Bob Pfister is Union Station’s censor.

shoot a wacky movie here where the doorman was supposed to be shirtless and the red cap surly,” said Pfister, the station manager. “But we made them change that.”

“The airport would never have a scene like that,” explained Tom Buckley, public relations chief for Santa Fe Southern Pacific.

“The airport” is an inevitable topic of conversation of train people.

Buckley recalled the time he told a producer that the cost of filming a movie at Union Station was $5,000 a day plus insurance requirements and the producer asked how he’d come up with that figure. “I didn’t tell him but I’d read in the papers three days before that that’s what the airport charges,” Buckley said, laughing.

Aside from costs, film companies must also agree to a list of restrictions--no opening the ancient Venetian blinds, for instance.

“We’re afraid they’d fall,” Pfister admitted.

Lighting can also be a problem because the station is purposely kept somewhat dim so its computers won’t overheat.

No matter the cost and red tape, the movie companies keep phoning.

“They’ve shot so many here I can’t keep track of them,” Pfister said as he thumbed through a file cabinet full of scripts. “ ‘True Confessions.’ That one with Barbra Streisand in it--yeah, ‘The Way We Were.’ ‘To Live and Die in L.A.’ Something called ‘The Woo Woo Kid’--I didn’t recognize any of the names in that. . . . Years ago there was even one called ‘Union Station.’ Had a big star . . .”

“William Holden,” Buckley said. “It was our ‘Airport.’ ”

Even a casual inspection of the freshly painted exterior, shiny brass light fixtures, ornate drinking fountains and high-backed leather chairs reveals why Union Station’s been called “The Last of the Great Stations” (the title of its biography by Bill Bradley), why it’s an official cultural landmark, why architecture students come to pay tribute, why travelers snap photographs of it and send copies to Pfister’s office.

Madden ranks it in a first-place tie (with Chicago’s Union Station) among the nation’s best.

He even diagrammed some side trips that passengers could take out of the station’s waiting room if they had spare time.

“You can cut either to the left or right and find patios,” he said. “Or you can go straight up the middle, out the door and across the street into one of the restaurants on Olvera Street.”

Actor James Mason used to sleep on the grass in the patios between trips.

For all its obvious beauty, there is another side to Union Station--the closed portions off-limits to the public. Its ghost town.

Pfister and a secretary work in a small office in an otherwise deserted, two-story annex to the station, their door locked to keep out transients.

Scheduled to be demolished to make room for a Metro Rail station, the annex houses old locker rooms and showers (where conductors and porters once washed up), rooms full of discarded equipment with walls bearing old train schedules and floors covered with years-old newspapers.

An empty two-cell jail languishes behind a door marked “Police.”

“It was used when law enforcement agencies transported prisoners,” said Southern Pacific’s Buckley, whose father was a locomotive engineer. “They could leave prisoners in there and go across the street and get a bite. That was before jets came in the late ‘50s.”

On the other side of the station sits the defunct but well-preserved Fred Harvey Restaurant, named for the king of depot diners whose dying words were said to have been: “Tell the boys not to cut the ham so damn thick.”

It’s a Moorish-influenced wonderland of arched ceilings, leather banquettes, corked walls and multicolored tiles bearing parrots. Its Art Deco cocktail lounge features a copper-sheeted bar, bubble-encased mirrors, red stripes of indirect lighting and black marble sinks in the “Powder Room.”

“This place used to really jump,” recalled Buckley. “Jurors came here. Soldiers passing through. Movie stars. When Metro Rail comes here, we think people will be pounding on our door to come in and lease it.”

While Buckley was talking, someone wandered in.

“Maybe it’s Wolfgang Puck,” he joked.

But it was a transient.

Ticket clerk Jack Kinney, a 30-year veteran and a third-generation railroad man, remembers the days when comic Jackie Gleason used to throw parties for his cast in one of Union Station’s offices--”he’d have big tubs of potato salad and cole slaw and other food.”

He remembers seeing actor Jimmy Cagney in a white suit and white shoes, and the time he asked newspaper columnist Walter Winchell for some identification before changing a $100 bill and Winchell snapped: “Here’s my Mafia card.”

The clientele isn’t quite so glamorous anymore.

“We got one guy who takes the Desert Wind to Vegas who says he’s Howard Hughes,” Kinney said. “We always say, ‘Have a nice trip, Mr. Hughes.’ Another woman claims she’s Ronald Reagan’s sister.”

The pigeons, which seem to use Union Station as their hangar, can be a distraction, too. One of the gray-and-white bombardiers scored a direct hit on Kinney once while he was working. “It was embarrassing because I was getting a customer a ticket,” he said. “After I finished with him, I just walked out--just went home and took about three showers.”

But, at least, his surroundings endure--the painted ceilings, the bronze-framed doors, the red quarry tile floors.

They were a pleasant surprise for ticket agent Ed Francis, a fourth-generation railroad man who transferred from Springfield, Mass., three years ago.

“First time I walked in, my eye caught the ceiling and I said, ‘Wow,’ ” he recalled. “There’s a warmth here, not like some of the stations in the East that have more of a warehouse-type feeling.”

There were other surprises, too.

“One day I see this attractive blonde woman with a low-cut dress and she’s carrying several suitcases and got three small kids with her,” Francis said. “As she comes through the door, one of the kids starts to run away. She reaches for him and her breasts just pop out of her dress. She starts to fix her dress and the kid takes off again. And she says, ‘Oh, the hell with it!’ grabs the kid and just walks into the station with her breasts hanging out.

“That’s when I knew I was in L.A.”