Boss of the Rails

Rolling toward Los Angeles at deep dusk, Amtrak engineer Ken Galusha strains to spot signs of life on the track ahead of him. “It’s almost dark and all I can see is a white T-shirt,” he says, recalling one image that sticks with him. A burst from the whistle persuades the vague figure to abandon the track to the onrushing train.

Such brief scares are typical of the railroad engineer’s workday, in which long stretches of routine are occasionally punctuated by random unpleasant surprises.

Monotony, excitement and stress go hand in hand in the engineer’s cab. The romantic notion of the engineer’s life gets lost in a clutter of regulations, signals and schedules, all intended to deliver passengers as quickly and safely as possible, and without threatening the lives of anyone in the vicinity of the tracks.

About 30 trains a day rumble over the Santa Fe tracks between Los Angeles and San Diego, and some residents treat them casually.

Galusha has learned to assume that surfers will be crossing the long trestle in San Clemente as he approaches, and he cuts loose early with the whistle to encourage them to scramble to safety. “They’ll get down between the girders,” he says. “I know I’ve saved a lot of lives with the whistle.”

Most of the time the whistle does the trick.

Sometimes it doesn’t.

The latest complete figures from the Federal Railroad Administration report 103 deaths in California in 1988 resulting from trespassing, grade crossings, collisions and derailments. Since the beginning of this year, one man has been killed and another seriously injured by trains in Orange County.

When someone doesn’t budge from the track, Galusha’s only other option is to hit the full emergency stop and hope for the best. There’s no dodging to the left or right, or stopping on a dime.

“I’m totally helpless if I’m going 90 miles an hour,” the 41-year-old engineer says. “It tears at you because you know you can’t do much.”

At 90 m.p.h., the train would take half a mile to stop. “It’s like a roller coaster. There’s no friction on those steel wheels. Not like rubber tires,” says Louis Pescevic, an engineer who lives in Mira Loma.

A grisly evaluation determines whether the train can proceed after someone is killed. If the body is still in one piece, the train doesn’t have to wait for the coroner to arrive. Otherwise, it waits, and that can take as long as three hours in the more deserted reaches along the coast, says engineer Ernie Hull of El Cajon.

Too many drivers stuck on the tracks freeze and don’t abandon their cars as a train approaches.

Pescevic recalls hitting a truck that got “high-centered” trying to drive around the gates at the crossing. “He was smart enough to get out of the truck,” he says “Don’t try to save your car; save your life.”

If a train is a threat to the unwary, it is also a king-size target for youngsters. Children will throw rocks at the trains. “I’m rocked probably once or twice a month,” Galusha says. From time to time he has had his windshield shattered. “It sounds like an M-80 or a shotgun going off. At night they come out of nowhere.”

Children also like to pile junk on the track to see what impact the train will have. Pescevic has hit ladders, rubber tires, shopping carts, couches and even a refrigerator. “You hit a refrigerator at 90 miles an hour and it does tend to fly,” Pescevic says.

Marines at Camp Pendleton and youngsters have been known to play chicken with passing trains. Most will jump out of the way before the train gets too close, but others will wait too long.

“The worst part is the kids along the railroad tracks,” Galusha says. “I’ve been real lucky I haven’t hit anybody. I’ve had close calls.” With three children of his own, the sight of youngsters meandering too close to the tracks makes him nervous.

Galusha, who is from Riverside, has been an engineer for 10 years. Because of his seniority, he usually gets his first choice when schedules are changed every six months. On Thursdays and Fridays he runs the San Diegan from Los Angeles to San Diego at 4:45 p.m. After a 80-minute layover in San Diego, he returns to Los Angeles, arriving at 11:25 p.m.

On Saturday nights, Galusha leaves Los Angeles at 8:30 p.m., in charge of the first leg of the Amtrak’s train to Chicago. After arriving in Kingman, Ariz. at 4:30 a.m., his crew has a 19-hour layover before joining the westbound 12:16 a.m. train, which arrives in Los Angeles at 7:47 a.m. He particularly enjoys the run to Kingman, Galusha says. “The desert has its own kind of serenity.”

Serenity is a scarce commodity for engineers. The engines are loud, and engineers must wear earplugs. They are in continual quest of 100% on-time performance, but delays of two or three minutes at a couple of stations can put the train so far behind schedule that it will miss its “meet” with an oncoming train and wind up routed to a siding to wait.

The engineers are constantly being tested.

One engineer estimates that Amtrak and the railroads challenge their engineers 15 or 20 times a month with procedures designed to warn the engineer to slow or stop. And each engine has an “alerter” that the engineer must touch every 30 or 40 seconds or the train will stop. The alerter has largely replaced the dead-man switch, which could be bypassed with a wrench or flag stick. Bypassing the alerter can bring a $10,000 to $25,000 fine.

Amtrak trains its engineers in a simulator in Chicago. Prospective engineers go through a six-week training session, and then return home for six months of on-the-job training. After four more weeks in Chicago, they go through a final qualification period.

Many of the engineers got their training on other railroads. Galusha attended Santa Fe’s training center in Topeka, Kan., where he studied the mechanical workings of the train, learned train handling and memorized the line’s operating rules. “You have to know the rules word for word,” he says.

Engineers earn $50,000 to $60,000 a year, depending on seniority and the number of hours they work, says Arthur Lloyd, director of public relations for Amtrak in the west. He says a total of 108 engineers operate out of Los Angeles and San Diego.

A regular change of scenery appeals to Pescevic. Every six months he chooses a different route.

“I like the variety, and it keeps you current with all the railroad rules,” he says, pointing out that an Amtrak train must also follow the operating regulations of the Santa Fe, Union Pacific or Southern Pacific railroads, depending on the track they’re using. The regulations cover roughly 1,100 miles of track and 117 block signals, and engineers must have an intimate knowledge of the speeds, grades and block signals on the track they cover.

Pescevic, 40, has been with Amtrak for 12 years. Working as an engineer is something of a family tradition; Pescevic’s father and grandfather were both railroad men. For years, Pescevic had no interest in following them, but at 28 he tired of working for a supermarket chain and joined the Santa Fe Railroad.

“It’s a stressful job, but it’s a job I enjoy. You get to see a lot. It’s a different job. I guess that’s what makes it exciting,” he says.

Hull, 55, has been working railroads for 37 years. For 33 years he worked mostly freight between Los Angeles and Bakersfield. Now, his usual shift has him leaving San Diego at 6:20 a.m. and arriving in Los Angeles at 9:10 a.m. During a three-hour layover at Union Station he walks, reads the newspaper, or goes for something to eat before reboarding and heading south, arriving in San Diego at 3:30 p.m.

After a long career in the cab, Hull is no stranger to accidents. “Last year I had a bad year; I hit three or four cars and a couple of trespassers,” he says. “Three people were killed. That’s a lot more than usual.”

On southbound journeys, engineers keep watch in a lead cab car--which is a beefed-up coach--and the engine pushes from behind. The setup saves three or four minutes in Los Angeles, and 25 to 30 minutes in San Diego because the trains don’t have to be turned around before they depart the station. But some engineers feel that the cab cars are susceptible to derailment in a collision and that anyone riding in the car faces a greater chance of injury in an accident. Amtrak management disagrees.

Once Hull’s seven-car train was heading southbound at 70 m.p.h. It came over a rise and from the cab car Hull saw a car sitting on the tracks about an eighth of a mile in front of him.

Hull hit the emergency stop and scrambled back to the passenger compartment to put distance between himself and the collision. The train hit the car at about 50 m.p.h., impaling it on the engine’s front knuckler draw bar.

In this case, the train suffered little damage.

Pescevic says driving from the cab car is comfortable, and the car is air-conditioned. It’s also quiet, for the most part, although when the brake valve bleeds right next to the engineer, it does so very loudly.

There’s an upsurge of interest in trains for commuter transportation in Southern California, and Hull is optimistic about the service. He says he has seen a large increase just in the four years he has been with Amtrak.

Pescevic says he thinks that people will eventually see “buck-and-a-quarter rides,” meaning trains hitting 125 m.p.h. on the San Diego run, although that would require the installation of a new signal system.

The enthusiasm for being an engineer lasts about a dozen years, say the engineers, and it’s only a few who really love the job who stay with it. Many go on to management jobs with the railroad.

After more than 30 years as an engineer, Hull says he doesn’t care for the monotony of the job, but other than that he likes it. “It pays fairly well. The engineer still has quite a bit of freedom,” he says. “He’s still mainly his own boss.”