VENTURA COUNTY NEWS : Watch on the Line : Ventura Retiree’s Lifelong Love of Railroading Leads to an Off-Beat Hobby

With barely a minute to spare before the scheduled arrival of Amtrak’s 776, Jerry Drapeau pedals up to the platform in Ventura on his gold beach cruiser.

He carefully dismounts, replaces a scuffed helmet with a cap decorated with railroad pins and leans his lanky form out from the platform to look for the train. It’s 40 seconds late.

Drapeau places a call to Amtrak from a pay phone to find out why and is told the 776 won’t be pulling into Ventura for another 29 minutes.

Not that delays are a concern to Drapeau. He’s not going anywhere.

“Time is not an issue for me,” said the 69-year-old retired courier, scratching the gray stubble beneath his chin. “It’s all relative, right? Twenty-nine minutes isn’t going to make or break me.”

Nearly every day for the past 35 years, Drapeau has made a daily pilgrimage to the depot across from the fairgrounds in Ventura to watch and document the passing trains.

For seven or eight hours each day, he takes detailed notes on each train’s time of arrival, engine type and number of cars, all scripted in a calligraphic flourish on carefully cut pieces of cardboard.

Drapeau knows his is an off-beat hobby, but said he has never tired of watching these massive machines rumble by.

He estimates that over the decades, he’s seen more than 200,000 of them thread their way through town, carrying everything from oranges to soldiers bound for war.

“I can count the same train a thousand times, but each time I see it, it’s like seeing it for the first time,” he said. “It might not be a good explanation, but that’s what it’s like for me.”

Drapeau, who never married, said he can’t remember a time when he didn’t love trains.

He grew up in a small home in Oak View nestled in a grove of apple trees. Not far from the house ran the old Ojai Line, which carried citrus from the Ojai Valley’s orchards to packing plants in Oxnard.

Twice daily, the old train would sound its shrill whistle, and Drapeau would come running to gawk in amazed wonder as it rumbled down the tracks, billowing a snow-white crown of steam.

“When I heard it coming I’d get over there in a hurry,” he said. “I’d lay down in the ditch and watch it go on by and then wait around for the next time.”

His dream was to one day become a conductor. But a childhood back condition dashed his hopes.

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“Back then when you worked for the railroads, you started in the yards hitching up cars and moved your way up to other jobs like brakeman before you could be a conductor,” he said. “But with my back I couldn’t even get in through the front door.”

When Drapeau was a teenager he “got in cahoots” with the conductor of the Ojai Line--a man named Joe Mason--who let him ride in the caboose to and from Oxnard. Drapeau would often take his accordion to play for the crew.

“Let me tell you, they were a well-entertained bunch of guys,” he said.

The years during World War II were the best for watching trains, Drapeau said, not just because the railroads were key to the nation’s war machine, but because there were a lot of trains to see.

There were Hudsons, Mastodons, powerful Yellowstones, 484s and the 10-wheeled Decapods.

“Nowadays you don’t get a chance to see so many different engines,” he said.

It wasn’t until the mid-1960s that Drapeau’s fascination with trains grew to include precise note-taking and rituals that he still follows today.

His days start early, about 7:30 a.m., when he gathers his things together and rides his bike from a retirement community near Ventura College to the platform where he’ll remain, counting trains, until about 2:30 p.m.

“About 90% of what I do is wait, but I never get bored,” he said. “I won’t let myself.”

When there is more than an hour wait between trains, Drapeau rides up to the Ventura Freeway where he watches traffic.

“I know that sounds a little funny, but it’s very interesting,” he said. “It’s like watching a parade. . . . It’s very mechanical; everybody’s out there jockeying for position.”

He knows when a train is coming because the tracks start to vibrate. He’ll pull out his piece of cardboard and one of the 12 colored Marvy Calligraphy pens--the only kind he uses--to make his notations. At the end of the day he transcribes the information into a notebook.

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Drapeau doesn’t know how many notebooks he has, but says he wants to donate them to the county historical society when he dies. That shouldn’t be any time soon, Drapeau says.

“There’s still plenty of trains to count and plenty of books to fill.”

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