COLUMN ONE : Riding the Rails of Friendship : N.Y. suburbanites have spent years developing relationships on trains instead of ulcers on freeways. When Metrolink makes its debut today, will L.A. commuters swap their cars for conversation?

Let the minutes show that the 7:34 Club has convened on time and in the usual fashion, in chaos and in comedy.

Present are the usual members, mostly middle-aged men and a few women, many of whom work in Manhattan’s garment district. Horse is here, and so are Slick, Speed, Stan the Man and the Rocket.

All of them ride together on the Long Island Rail Road from the suburban comfort of Baldwin to the urban chaos of Pennsylvania Station in the city.

“This guy here was a supply sergeant in World War II for, what, the 15th Division?” Maurice Mahler--”Slick” to his comrades-in-commuting--volunteers by way of introducing his seatmate, Harry Geller, the Hosiery King.

“Yeah, he still has the supplies at home,” adds Stan (the Man) Rosenau, sitting a row away.

The clicketyclack of the train’s wheels on the rails provides a rim shot. For the next 39 minutes, until the train pulls into Platform 19 next to Madison Square Garden, the show is on.

Commuting long distance by train--a familiar rite of suburban living in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and other big cities--has been limited in Southern California to a few thousand people a day on Amtrak’s intercity San Diegans.

That is likely to change as Metrolink, the Southern California regional commuter railroad, opens its first three lines today. For novice riders made anxious by the thought of giving up the four-level interchange for a double-decked commuter train, there is a lot to learn from the veterans of the Long Island Rail Road.

For one thing, commuter trains are not subways. Outwardly, they may look similar, down to the electrified third rail that powers each. But inside, regular riders say the atmosphere in commuter trains is less tense, more civilized--even, as with the 7:34 Club, friendly.

And train commuting is less stressful than driving. Club members have spent years developing friendships on the train instead of ulcers on the expressway. Jack Gindin, for example, says the 37-minute train ride saves him from driving 1 hour and 20 minutes in his car.

“I’ve timed it,” he says. And, Gindin adds, his $142 monthly train pass is far cheaper than driving--indeed, less than the cost of parking alone in the city.

“We are among the few people who love the Long Island Rail Road,” says Martin Gewirtz, a graphic artist and unofficial club spokesman, “because we’ve tried the alternative.”

*

As the 7:34 from Baldwin races through Rockville Center, Mahler gestures across the aisle at Gindin.

“I’ve been riding with this guy for 35 years,” says Mahler. He pauses ever so subtly, then adds for comic effect: “Don’t ask me why.”

Seymour Schnall butts in. “I have three years on both of you,” he says from the other side of the train. “I’ve been doing it for 38 years.”

Over a row, Harry Geller sniffs and shrugs at the youngsters and declares he has spent 46 years commuting on the Long Island Rail Road.

But even Geller is a novice compared to two elderly men sitting at the end of the row.

“First there was Adam and Eve, then these guys,” says Rosenau, tilting his head toward Milton J. Mirmin and David Cahn.

Mirmin sheepishly concedes that he began commuting on the line during the early years of the Hoover Administration, before the stock market crashed in 1929 or anyone thought about building expressways from rural Long Island into Manhattan.

As the senior and perhaps most genial member of the 7:34 Club, Mirmin comes in for more than his share of ribbing. At 79, he is known among club members as “Speed” and is the designated platform “spotter.” His duty is to guess where on the platform the train will stop each morning, and where its doors will open.

“If he hits the spot just right, we can all sit together,” says Gewirtz. “If not, we’re scattered throughout the car. He has a very important job.”

This morning, he hits the spot perfectly, wisely taking advantage of the courtesies grudgingly afforded a man of his years by other passengers scrambling for available seats. He secures the perfect setting: two rows with nine seats, near a door and facing each other.

Between wisecracks and good-natured kibitzing, they plan the 7:34 Club dinner. Like Chardonnay sifted on a sommelier’s tongue, a Nov. 7 date is considered and mulled over, its ramifications carefully analyzed until the 7:34 Club is satisfied.

This is to be only the second annual dinner for this particular club, but it is nothing to be taken lightly. Last year, Mahler flew five hours from Vancouver--where he was filming a television commercial--to attend. It is the one opportunity for club spouses to finally meet the sources of endless funny stories, perhaps the only time of year when club members even think about one another’s last names.

Off the train, the club members mostly know each other by first names--Maurice and Seymour, Stan and Jack, Larry and Harry. There is little fraternizing except from 7:34 to 8:13 a.m.--the time it takes to ride from Baldwin to Manhattan--and thus little use for surnames. Most members do not even take the same train home. If they do, they are not aware of it.

Similar kinships can be found on trains plying other routes. Regular riders on the afternoon 5:46 to Huntington, N.Y., for example, have organized fishing trips, golf games, pool parties, even a marriage.

Poker, hearts and gin rummy games with regular players are common--even, in at least one case, legendary. The 5:32 p.m. train from New York to Stamford, Conn., hosts “kamikaze poker” games in which traders known to make a killing on Wall Street in the morning can lose $200 on the 37-minute ride home in the evening.

Most passengers, however, spend their time on commuter trains reading, working crossword puzzles, reflecting--or sleeping. On a recent 6:21 to Ronkonkoma, N.Y., nearly half of the heads on the train were gently bobbing to the train’s soothing rhythm, their owners soundly asleep.

Despite the existence of close-knit groups such as the 7:34 Club, many commuters never talk to one another. Class has something to do with it. Men in gray flannel suits and plaid flannel work shirts may share a seat, but can go entire trips without speaking.

Regular riders clutch tickets in their hands and fold their arms over their chests as they sleep, making it easier for conductors to do their work without waking up people. Bill Peet, who works for Los Angeles-based First Sun America Insurance Co., pins his monthly pass to the lapel of his blue pin-striped suit, a precaution he took after losing one of the $180 tickets.

“It’s relaxing; the train lulls you,” says the recent college graduate, who lives with his parents in Brentwood, N.Y., until he can afford to move into his own place in the city.

“For the first couple of months, you stay awake,” he says, “but pretty soon you start sleeping because everyone else is passed out.”

*

Nappers are scarce on the Amtrak trains that rumble into Los Angeles each day from Orange County and San Diego. Scarcer still are close-knit yock artists like the members of the 7:34 Club.

“Hey, Bob, we have a suite here,” a man in a business suit jokes to a colleague recently as they settle into two banks of facing seats on a train to Orange County.

“Is this first class?” says the colleague, giving the train’s overstuffed seats an exaggerated squeeze.

The two men then crack open their briefcases and get to work.

Unlike their New York cousins, California commuters share their trains with suitcase-toting tourists because, strictly speaking, Amtrak’s San Diegan trains are an intercity service that commuters have adopted as their own.

If this sometimes slows the boarding process or fills the overhead racks with backpacks, the intercity nature of the trains guarantees commuters they can soothe their frustrations with a beer or cup of coffee in the cafe car.

New York converted its storied bar cars into regular passenger coaches years ago, replacing them with independently owned “bar carts” wedged in behind seats. The Metrolink cars that will start running tomorrow will not even offer that convenience; California commuters will be free to eat and drink on Metrolink trains, but only what they bring on board themselves.

In part because there are fewer seats--four in a row in California, versus five in a row in New York--the atmosphere on Amtrak’s San Diegan trains is more cordial and relaxed than on the Long Island Rail Road.

Passengers rolling in or out of Los Angeles often strike up conversations with one another, including strangers. Even the conductors treat regular passengers like close friends, and the regulars know their favorite conductors by name.

“It’s really a very pleasant way to get to work,” says Steven T. Hermanson, a commercial real estate appraiser who drives every morning from his Mission Viejo home to Irvine, where he hops the train. “I couldn’t face going back to my car.”

Just as social life on New York trains resembles a comedy club or casino, the comparison in Los Angeles is something closer to a block party--or, sometimes, a singles bar.

The 5:40 p.m. out of Los Angeles has barely pulled out of Union Station one recent Friday when a couple of dozen Amtrak regulars--a bit younger and much quieter than the comedian-commuters of Long Island--jam the cab car and break out refreshments.

In classic California fashion, one party-goer proffers a selection of imported beers, each more obscure than the next. Another uncorks a couple of bottles of wine. A sushi sampler is set next to appetizers from La Golondrina Mexican Cafe on Olvera Street, near Union Station.

Hermanson says single commuters have been known to meet at the cab-car party on Friday evening, then move on to dinner at the Rio Grande Bar and Grill inside the San Juan Capistrano station to continue talking--and make plans for the evening--in a more private setting.

*

As soon as the Long Island Rail Road’s 7:34 train pulls away from the elevated concrete station on the edge of Baldwin’s low-rise city center, garment worker Seymour Schnall--the “Last of the Reweavers”--gestures across the car toward his old friend, Mirmin.

“This guy,” Schnall says sotto voce, “he starts talking as soon as he sits down and he keeps on talking until we get to Penn Station.”

Schnall pauses, smiles, sets the comic hook. “Watch,” he says, shooting his thumb across the aisle once again. “Watch him talk.”

Mirmin, one of the nation’s foremost rare stamp and coin dealers, doesn’t utter a sound.

“He gets his tongue retreaded every 3,000 miles,” Mahler offers.

“I can’t believe it!” Rosenau says in mock alarm, reaching out to Mirmin’s ear. “What? Is your battery dead? What do you use, a 9-volt battery in there?”

A number of passengers look up from their books and papers. Most smile at the friendly needling.

“It starts the day off with a laugh,” says Bernice Yellis, a textile converter in the garment district. She became a member of the club almost by accident. After stumbling across the floating comedy club one day, she has sought it out each day since.

“They kibitz each other, but not in a mean way,” she says. “They’re really very nice and like each other a lot.”

Yellis, like most other members of the 7:34 Club, has palled around with other commuters before. She remembers one group, on the old 5:37 to Babylon via Baldwin, that shared a bottle of wine on the way home every evening.

“Truth be told,” she confides, “we were all a little tipsy by the time we got off.”

Most train-board friendships seem to have a limited shelf life, seeded from the start with a certain entropy rooted in corporate business cycles and human life spans.

“We lost our members through attrition,” Yellis says. “Some people retired or were transferred or . . . died, I guess.”

“This is the third or fourth group that I’ve belonged to,” says Geller. “Sure, people die, or they take another job or another train or they just retire to Florida.”

Yellis, drifting down the years she has spent on the railroad, wistfully recalls another group that used to share breakfast on the way into the city: lox and bagels, coffee and orange juice.

“You don’t see that very much anymore,” she says, suddenly struck by the loss. “I don’t know why.”