Love on a Roll : It’s All Aboard for Nuptials as Conductor Gets Hitched on Train

As a wedding chapel, the swaying, jampacked commuter train--bound from Los Angeles to San Diego on track 10--was not exactly Westminster Abbey. Streamers and paper bells swung wildly in the aisles. Guests stumbled into each other. The altar was nothing more than a bar in the drinking car.

Even so, about 140 well-wishers crowded deliriously into three specially reserved train cars on Friday to cheer veteran Amtrak conductor and comic Larry Lindbloom, 42, who was getting hitched in the only way that seemed appropriate--riding out of town on a rail.

Lindbloom, in a black tuxedo, and his bride, Christine King, 42, wearing a white gown and pearls (no train), had decided as a lark to exchange vows on the 128-mile route that Lindbloom travels twice each working day, regaling commuters with his inexhaustible repertoire of jokes.

But this was no joke--it was marriage.

“Will you please get that out of my face!’ Superior Court Commissioner Joan Carney, who performed the fast-moving ceremony, commanded to a man with a video camera. The wedding party was now struggling to assemble at the bar. Lindbloom had maneuvered with difficulty through the two-foot-wide aisle. All decorum seemed left at the station.

“I will tell you, we’re working under unusual circumstances,” Carney went on, standing atop a box near a case of beverage cans. “And I’ll tell you, when this is over, I’m going to want a drink.”

The commissioner, who professed to be under legal pressure to complete the nuptials before crossing the county line, quickly began by quoting the writer Ellen Goodman, who spoke of love: “If you know you’re no bargain in the morning, by evening you could be atwitter with appreciation for someone who loves you anyway.”

Then came more familiar words: “With these rings, I thee wed.”

“Diamonds,” Lindbloom quipped, presenting his bride a ring, “are a girl’s best friend.”

The train lurched. “We’re rocking a bit, aren’t we?” the commissioner intoned, adding, “You may kiss the bride.”

As Lindbloom did, raucous cheers erupted.

The newlyweds, bound for dinner in San Juan Capistrano before traveling home to San Diego, clearly were among many of their closest friends: the close-knit fraternity of commuters who travel by train into Los Angeles each morning and then home at night. The “San Diegan,” as the 4:45 p.m. train out of Los Angeles is called, takes nearly three hours to complete its route.

Passengers spend the time reading, talking, sipping drinks. They know each other. They celebrate birthdays, meet outside far-flung train stations for Friday-night parties, even go together to summer barbecues.

“It’s like a family,” said conductor Tom Tuttle. “That’s why the wedding is here--because of the commuters.”

Rosie Nieradka, 38, who travels 90 minutes each way between a fabric plant in Los Angeles and her home in San Juan Capistrano, is on Lindbloom’s train every morning. He makes it seem less a journey than a Don Rickles show.

“Literally, there are days when I get off and my ribs are aching” from laughter, Nieradka said. “He’s a wonderful, cynical character.”

Though they did not meet on the train, Lindbloom and his bride hail from the same side of the tracks--the good side. They were introduced last year at the Mission Bay Boat Club. His wedding gift to her was a 23-foot cabin cruiser.

“He knows how to handle his money,” Christine said coyly.

She was grinning now with the ceremony over. Lindbloom, meanwhile, wandered into the far reaches of the train, shaking hands as he went.

For a long while, he seemed to disappear.

“I saw him with a redhead just two minutes ago,” Ellen Jackson, 31, a computer graphics worker from Oceanside said jokingly. Jackson talked of Lindbloom’s “terrible” jokes--gags that he writes down and keeps in envelopes.

“I imagine, right now, Larry is telling a joke.”

Indeed, he was. In another compartment, cradling a champagne bottle, Lindbloom was telling the one about the nun who went to Heaven and got to meet Mary. “What is it like,’ the nun says, ‘to be the mother of God?” Lindbloom said, lowering his voice to relate Mary’s answer: “To tell you the truth, we really wanted Him to be a doctor.”

Passengers roared.

Outside, it was now dark. The long road ahead was impossible to see.

But obviously, the conductor and his lady were on a roll.