Train engineers

The article School stresses train engineers must stay alert in The Jakarta Post on Sept. 11, 2001, attracted my attention.

A late uncle of mine, born in 1900, happened to work as a train engineer, then called a machinist, some time between 1920 and 1930.

He was an active man, physically, mentally and morally. A person for whom right was right and wrong was wrong. In my childhood, my mother used to tell me that, as an elder brother, he always protected her when she was teased by other children at school. In later years, our families indeed became close.

Between 1940 and 1945, only a few years before the Japanese occupation, together with an elderly sports figure, he organized long marches, then called wandelmars.

Too young to join the over 17-year-old Batavia-Buitenzorg mars, it was thanks to these events that I obtained some 13 medallions earned after marches varying from 10 to 30 kilometers each.

Well, this uncle of mine died in Belgium at the age of 92 years. He had received a plaque of recognition from the mayor of Gent Brugge for being the oldest participant in a long march when he was 82 years old.

To return to the topic of the train engineers, I remember him once telling me that in that period he never saw his children, as when he went home they have gone to bed and at the time he was leaving for work they were still sleeping.

This article made me remember times in my life when I happened to be at a railway station and saw the personnel there in their uniforms.

But times have changed, working schedules have been altered. Only the machinists are still there, the train engineers.

NETTY MULIA

Jakarta