I stood at the back door of the coach, hidden from the passengers in the vestibule, taking a moment to myself at my favorite spot. Outside, through the open door, the ties merged and became one as we traveled down the track at a fine clip. The late summer sun -- a trickster tempting with warmth while the winds bit with a chill foretaste of autumn -- drenched the pastoral landscape in amber and gold as we passed. It was morning, the first run of the day, on my last month as rookie brakeman on the Chehalis-Centralia.

I was nervous. It had been more than a month since I had been scheduled on the Chehalis tourist road in Washington state, and I was afraid I would be rusty. As much as I looked forward to it all, I was still the outsider in my mind, and the rookie to boot. To goof up would be to show how little I belonged, and that just wouldn't do. Would I remember if I was to bottle the air, or dump it, when making our runaround between each trip? Would I remember not to dislexically invert my hand signals when I did the air test? Would I, would I, would I ... ?

As the countryside slipped by, I ran through in my mind the year I had lived. Before I came to the Chehalis, I had never worked with full-size, FRA-governed rail equipment before. The closest I had ever gotten to such an experience was employing speeders and speeder flats as part of the section gang on a tourist trolley line. Then came fate -- in the form of my friend Josh Delp -- telling me Chehalis, 80 miles north of me, needed a brakeman, and offering to let me stay with him if I wanted to go after the position. In the middle of a slew of charters, my training rushed through in four short days. Then I was set out on my own as a brakeman, as a fullfledged, paid railroad employee. My two-week trial by fire left me exhausted, but also with a sense of satisfaction, and of accomplishment.

The summer passed, and I returned again and again, as often as I could afford to put my "normal" life, such as it was, on hold. It was a strange time. Certainly, being a brakie was not always fun. Despite the image the typical railfan photograph might portray, railroads are not just run on sunny summer days in comfortable temperatures. We ran trains regardless of whether it was raining or windy, miserably hot and sticky, or cold and bitter. We ran when we had 200 screaming children on board, and also with only 10 oldtimers, whose passage barely covered fuel costs.

Unlike freight railroaders, we in passenger service had to look clean and smart in our white shirts, black vests and pants, and, if we could afford to buy them, our smart hats. As of yet, I could not. In this uniform I worked, no matter the weather, no matter how cold I was wearing only a button-down shirt and vest in the rain, no matter how warm I became wearing such an affair in 90-plus degree heat. My job was not only to watch over our passengers and play the part of host, but also to do the dirty work of cuts and joints at each end of our runs. Result? My new, crisp white shirts were quickly spotted with soot from the exhaust, and grease from crawling between the cars to hook up the air hoses.

I remembered one particularly tough time running over rarely used trackage, when I discovered that a hornet's nest had been built right beside the points of a switch that I had been assigned to throw. In the heat of that day, I discovered a new-found hatred for hornets, and learned the hard way that I was not allergic to their stings. Every run, no matter the conditions or passenger count, involved directing the movements of locomotives and cars that weighed tens of tons. Each had the inherent dangers of working with rail equipment: couplers, air hoses, derailments. There was no break, no relief, no let-up just because it had been a bad day. The work went on.

But I also remembered the end of that day. The passengers had gone, the cars were locked up, and Harold Borovec and Andy Rose, our engineer and fireman, respectively, were about to shut down the engine. Tired, sweaty, and annoyed at the insect sting, I stood in the cab of 1916 Baldwin 2-8-2 logger-type number 15, silent and still, breathing like a flushed bird and staring at the firebox door, at the eye of the sun burning with primal orange glee. Harold, an 80-year-old kid in a red-and-white polka-dot hat, noted my fixation and interrupted my meditation.

"I used to stand there and watch the fire when I was 16," he said. I asked if he meant this same engine, and he had replied in the affirmative. Suddenly the years fell away, and I realized Harold was living out a childhood dream.

The jingle of keys signaling my conductor's approach broke me from my reverie. We were nearing Milburn, a double-ended siding that we would employ for a runaround, and it was almost time for me to do some groundwork again. The routine came back to me easily as I gave the signal to go inbetween the cars, cut out the air on the engine, then emerged again to yank the cut lever and give a pin sign to Harold. Without even trying, I was back in the groove, as if I had never left. Perhaps I had had nothing to worry about all along. Perhaps it was in my blood. Or perhaps I just lucked out.

In the parking lot, beside our half-restored former Milwaukee Road depot, sat a trailer all summer long, belonging to the Chehalis' resident wheel greaser and jack-of-all-trades, Boyd Madsen. A sunbird by nature, Boyd was already planning his escape to warmer climes.

"When you have to wear this," he said, fingering his white T-shirt through the neck of his button-down shirt, "and you start feeling that chill in the air, you know it's time."

But today he was still in Chehalis, and today, as was his habit from time to time, he was hosting a cookout for the crew, a sort of tailgate party, railroad-style. Hibachi barbeques rested on a plastic table beside his trailer, and the smell of grilling beef wafted through the air while we sat around in lawn chairs tossing jokes and anecdotes at each other. It was like a family picnic, though perhaps somewhat more fun and less strained.

As the sun began setting over the hills that separated us from the sea, the time drew nearer for me to catch my train home. It was perhaps that nearness of parting that made me realize at last that I was not an outsider, that I belonged on that makeshift tarmac patio in the evening light with Harold, Boyd, Josh, and the rest of the gang.

As the land began to darken, I leaned back in my seat aboard a southbound train, anxious to hear again from my friends and loved ones. Soon enough, outside my window, the mountains that ring the Columbia River popped into view, home beckoning strongly to my heart. My river, my mountains, my bed; they all called to me.

But in my pocket, silent and gleaming, sat a little brass switch key. After a summer of work, a summer of borrowing keys from others, I had only just acquired it. But it was happy to be ignored, to be outshone by the hills of my home. It was happy to be silent, for it knew a simple kind of truth: that I would be back. I did not really own the key at all; the key owned me.  

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