WORKING IN L.A. / AMTRAK CONDUCTOR : It’s Just the Ticket

Bob Morgan likes to talk to people.

For a while, he was a disc jockey. Then he was a tour bus driver. Now he has what he considers “the best job in the world”--he’s an Amtrak train conductor.

In this, the dawn of full-scale railroad commuting in Los Angeles, Morgan is responsible for getting hundreds of people to and from work, and a lot of other places. And while he is doing it, he gets to chat a bit.

“You get to meet every kind of person in the human spectrum--everything from auto mechanics to bank presidents,” the 49-year-old conductor said.

Despite their vocational variety, commuters fall into two groups.

“If they’ve had a good day, they look up and smile when I take their ticket,” Morgan said. “Those are the people I talk to--about their hobbies, their homes, their kids, whatever they want to talk about. If they’ve had a bad day, they keep their head down and just reach their hand up with the ticket. When they’ve had a day like that, I leave them alone.”

Morgan, who works a replacement shift, filling in on everything from commuter runs in Southern California to the 2 1/2-day hauls to Chicago on the Desert Wind and the Southwest Chief, was assigned a few days ago to Amtrak No. 580, an evening commuter train from Los Angeles to San Diego.

He arrives for work at Union Station about an hour ahead of time, resplendent in his navy blue Amtrak uniform.

First, he reads the general orders for the day, which tell him about track conditions and special operating instructions. After that, he stops by the Amtrak window to pick up a packet of tickets for sale to passengers who fail to buy them before boarding the train.

Next comes a stop at the station control tower to get a copy of the “traffic warrants”--a set of clearances, issued by the Santa Fe Railroad, giving No. 580 the right to travel on schedule over the Santa Fe tracks between Los Angeles and San Diego.

Then, as several hundred passengers board the seven-car train, Morgan meets with the engineer, Hector Durazo, to make sure there are no mechanical problems.

Strange as it may seem, Durazo is not riding in the locomotive. In fact, nobody was. On the runs to San Diego, the locomotive is at the back of the train and Durazo operates the whole thing by remote control from a tiny cab at the front of the lead car.

Precisely at 4:45 p.m, the train eases away from the platform at Union Station. Morgan confirms the time with a glance at his vintage Hamilton railroad pocket watch, a treasured gift from a friend.

“Right on time,” he says with a satisfied smile.

A quick look down the sides of the train confirms that everyone has gotten on all right, but Morgan said that is not always the case.

“Yesterday, some guy was hanging off the outside of the rear car as my train pulled out of Las Vegas,” the conductor said. “There was no way he could climb inside from there and it was three hours to the next stop, at Barstow, through some of the nastiest, hottest desert on Earth. I couldn’t leave him out there, so I had to stop the train. At least he was embarrassed.”

Morgan said that because of the need to keep schedules, a conductor--who is the boss of the train crew--will stop a train, or hold one at the station, only in exceptional cases.

“One time a woman expected me to hold the train because her brother was still in the station bathroom,” Morgan said. “I can’t do that, because we got hundreds of other people on the train and a lot of them have to make connections.

“But another time, a woman left her kids in the car with the engine running while she put her momma on the train in Del Mar. Before she realized it, the train had started up with her still on it. By the time she found me, she was pretty upset.

“Of course I stopped that train,” he said. “But I guess she had to walk the 2 1/2 miles back to Del Mar.”

As No. 580 rolls smoothly southward through Los Angeles and Orange counties at speeds of up to 90 m.p.h., Morgan works his way through the cars, taking tickets, answering questions, making sure passengers got off at the right stations and engaging in small talk.

“How have you been?” asks Eleanor Segard, who has been riding the train between Oceanside and Los Angeles for more than 20 years and was seated amid a noisy group.

“Fine. It’s good to see all of you,” Morgan replies, pausing for a few minutes to exchange pleasantries and catch up on the latest train gossip.

“We’re the regulars, we party every day,” Segard tells a reporter who was along for the ride. “This is group therapy at 5 p.m.”

Morgan says they were a relatively sedate crowd compared to the “Ramtrack” fans who take the train to and from the football games at Anaheim Stadium.

“The train’s a good deal for them,” he says. “They can get as blitzed as they want at the game and still ride home safely.”

A few seats farther down the car, Joyce Mitchell, another regular commuter, tells Morgan she had missed him lately.

“Been working the Desert Wind,” Morgan says.

“I wish I saw him more often,” Mitchell tells a companion. “He’s got such a great voice.”

Morgan’s mellifluous baritone was developed during his more than 20 years as a disc jockey. While not as well known as another Southland disc jockey with a very similar name--Robert W. Morgan--he developed a modest following of his own while working at stations KGBS, KHTZ and KTNQ in the Los Angeles area.

“I liked it,” Morgan said, “but the company sold the last station I was working for. I sort of retired.”

Over the next few years, he worked as the driver of a tour bus hauling tourists around the United States in between stints at desert-area radio and television stations. He also signed up as a reserve deputy for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, work he performs in his spare time.

After a few years in the Victorville area, Morgan hired on with the Union Pacific railroad as an apprentice brakeman.

“I’d always wanted to be a conductor, but you’ve got to work your way up,” he said. “When I was a kid growing up in Glendale, I used to go down to the station to watch the trains. My grandfather was a conductor for the Southern Pacific for 54 years and he was my role model.”

Four years ago, he switched over to Amtrak and started training to become a conductor, learning all the rules, regulations and tactics needed to guide a railroad train safely across Southern California.

“It was tougher than the Sheriff’s Academy,” he said. “But I got the job.”

No. 580 pulls into the station at San Juan Capistrano at 6:01 p.m. and Morgan, who is making an abbreviated run, gets off to await a ride back to Los Angeles.

A woman, noticing his uniform, approaches him on the station platform and tells him her elderly mother, who had been expected in on No. 580, has not gotten off the train.

“Was she making a connection?” Morgan asks.

The woman said that yes, her mother had planned to catch No. 580 after arriving in Los Angeles on the Desert Wind.

Morgan makes a couple of calls, learns that the Desert Wind had been running late and explains to the woman that her mother would probably be on the next southbound train.

“Oh thank you,” the woman says. “We’d been so worried. Thank you very much.”

Morgan smiles, touches his cap and heads down the platform for a bite to eat.