Riding the Rails in Style : Regular Commuters on L.A.-San Diego Run Leave the Driving to the Harried

Train conductor Joseph Byrd glanced anxiously at his pocket watch and scanned the suddenly deserted rail platform at Union Station in Los Angeles.

“All aboard!” he yelled to no one in particular. Then he produced a walkie-talkie from the pocket of his blue suit coat and stepped onto the San Diego-bound passenger train.

“I’m ready,” he barked to the engineer.

On board, the train’s bar car was already doing a brisk business. Two attendants mixed drinks with double shots for weary passengers facing the evening’s ride home--to any one of half a dozen stops between Fullerton and downtown San Diego.

Outside, the train sounded its whistle--a low and humble utterance as the engine built up speed, soon to catch up with and exceed the speed of cars on a nearby freeway.

Burly Phil Heathman heard the whistle and smiled, knowing that another Friday afternoon commute was finally under way.

An optometrist from Del Mar, Heathman commutes with his father each day to their Pomona eyeglass shop. Every weekday morning they catch the 6:45 train out of Del Mar and watch the exotic Pacific coastline whiz past, telling jokes and sharing quality time.

Like traveling neighbors, they know people at every stop. “Riding Amtrak has replaced my social life,” Paul Heathman, an optician, says. “It’s the only place I meet people anymore.”

People like George Thompson of Oceanside, a workers compensation judge who commutes to Santa Ana each day. Or Sean Barrett, a Carlsbad corporate banker who, along with his trusty portable computer, makes office visits to Los Angeles several times a week.

On the train, they’re known as the regulars--the judges and high-profile attorneys, delivery truck drivers and go-go dancers, skip-tracers and little old ladies, bankers, art dealers and optometrists--even the long-haired man who insists that he has just been delivered to Earth by aliens.

Last year, more than 1.6 million passengers rode the 125-mile Los Angeles-San Diego rail corridor, the nation’s second-busiest passenger train route, according to Amtrak statistics.

Among them are riders who spend as much as four hours a day--20 hours a week--on the train, beginning with coffee-laden mornings and ending with a few high-spirited drinks on the trip home.

As commutes go, the Amtrak is more like a room with a view.

On the San Diegan--the name for the daily trains between Los Angeles and San Diego--the sea is a familiar companion. At speeds of 80 to 90 m.p.h., the train hurtles past the unobstructed ocean vistas at Camp Pendleton until, heading north, it turns away from the sea.

It dissects the rolling Orange County hillsides, offering a voyeuristic look into the back yards of suburban homes not seen from any freeway.

From there the scenery breaks into a more urban landscape--the warehouses and factories that make up the dark underside of Los Angeles.

For the regulars, the reasons for riding are myriad. Some take the train to beat the growing gridlock of Southern California freeway traffic and at the same time maybe establish a business contact among other riders.

Others enjoy the freedom of being able to read a book or newspaper, savor the view, or even allow the rhythm of the rails to lull them to sleep while they go to work.

The commute can be a study in free time.

Some regulars fidget, listen absent-mindedly to the train’s clackety-clack, or even take a chance and talk to a stranger with a backpack. Some prefer to ride facing forward, others like the seats that carry them along backward.

Most forsake the custom class, which has cushier seats and costs extra, preferring the regular coaches, where they often sit in the same seats, next to the same faces, day after day.

Most avoid the front car on the evening commute when the engine pushes the train toward San Diego--and not just because it is reserved for smokers. Conductors call it the “death car” because in the event of a head-on crash, it would crumple like an accordion.

In the morning, however, the train is a “puller.” Some restless men, their suit jackets neatly folded in the luggage rack above them, wander up and down the aisle, telling jokes to the conductors, introducing themselves to women half their age.

Anything to keep from getting behind the wheel of a car.

“When I look out the window and see people backed up on the freeway, I feel like I’m cheating the traffic somehow,” said John Beliveau, a Del Mar resident who drives a delivery truck in Orange County.

“Pretty soon, though, I’m afraid the people out there on the freeway are going to get wise to the train,” he said. “And then it may be as crowded in here as it is out there.”

Amtrak officials echo that prediction. By the year 2000, they say, the federally subsidized train service may become a preferred method of travel between San Diego and Los Angeles.

“When there’s no more room to build new freeways and the air corridors become too crowded, the railroad will become a logical alternative,” said Sue Martin, an Amtrak spokeswoman in Washington.

But many regular passengers say that Amtrak is still miles away from being able to railroad the rest of the region.

Amtrak has begun a multiphase program to install new track between Los Angeles and San Diego, but top officials recently announced there was no money to add trains or replace aging signal equipment.

As a result, delays of up to several hours are common, especially after an accident on the rails in which the train plows into an unwary motorist, a stray animal or a suicide victim.

Judge George Thompson says that, at least once a month, he has to borrow some attorney’s briefcase telephone to call the court to say he’ll be late.

Others are more enterprising. During a recent train breakdown, one passenger recalled how he walked to a pay phone and called for a friend to come by with his school bus to taxi train riders to their destinations.

The regulars don’t suffer delays silently.

“If you ran a business the way the federal government ran Amtrak, you’d go broke,” said Dick Schwald, an Orange County engineer who regularly commutes to Los Angeles. “But I’ll tell you one thing they do know how to do--and that’s throw a pretty good party.”

When Friday afternoon arrives--and the 4:40 p.m. and 5:50 p.m. trains rumble south out of Los Angeles--most rail passengers are ready to cut loose.

Come Friday, the regular rollers are ready to rock.

Give the regulars a reason to party, and the bar car will instantly become adorned with balloons, hand-made banners and crepe-paper decorations, routine riders say.

On Halloween, many regulars dress in costume. They exchange gifts on Christmas and on Bastille Day celebrate with an assortment of French wines. They also throw an annual sock-hop in which prizes are awarded for the wildest socks.

When one regular rider recently turned 40, other passengers hauled in a miniature coffin and even talked the conductors into wearing black ribbons as a symbol of mourning.

“I hear they even brought in a stripper for the guy,” one regular said. “But I’m not sure. Unfortunately, my stop came and I had to get off.”

According to one party legend, regulars once staged “snake races” in the overhead luggage bins, trying to out-wriggle each other to the front of the car.

For some, however, the Amtrak ride out of San Diego each day is anything but a party. It’s a tense adventure that could make the difference between freedom and a bus ride back to the Third World.

Several times a month, U.S. Border Patrol agents board the train at Oceanside in search of illegal aliens who, under the cover of darkness, might have stolen on board in Del Mar or San Diego.

Each year, officials estimate, thousands of aliens are snatched from trains heading out of San Diego.

“Sometimes, we get 50 or 60 of them on a single train,” said Mike Gregg, a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman. “So it adds up.”

Regulars say the illegals are often found hiding in bathrooms, in the breezeway between cars, even on the roof--their figures casting eerie shadows toward the sea on the morning commute north.

Judge Thompson has a grudging respect for the ingenuity of many of the trains’ illegal stowaways.

“I’ve heard the story about the two Guatemalans who every Christmas season head north on the train from North (San Diego) County, knowing they’re going to be apprehended by Customs,” he said.

“Since Mexico won’t take them, they’re flown back to Venezuela. From there they take the bus home, a free holiday trip at the expense of the U.S. government.”

John Beliveau has another feeling when he sees the timid men and women huddled together in the corner of a train car.

“Sometimes they make it, sometimes they don’t--the officers jump out and surprise them,” he said.

“And so you start to root for them. I know a lot of people who do it, they root for the underdog.

“It’s a little bit of intrigue on the morning commute. It’s what trains are supposed to be all about.”