There are train buffs, and there are train buffs - and then there is Walter O'Rourke. On a recent evening in Pennsylvania Station, Mr. O'Rourke, a New Jersey Transit conductor, opened the doors to his train, and a river of elbows and briefcases, knapsacks and newspapers rushed in.

　　His gendarme cap crooked, his glasses bobbing off his nose, Mr. O'Rourke smiled and said, "There's no place else I'd rather be."

　　He wasn't kidding.

　　In fact, there are plenty of other places Mr. O'Rourke, 65, could have been. He could have been at his log cabin in Townsend, Del., which sits on 140 acres. He could have been in one of his two Florida homes, or at his insurance company there.

　　Heck, Mr. O'Rourke could have been off running his own railroad, the one he owns in West Virginia. But there he was, a millionaire from business, real estate and insurance investments, punching tickets on a suburban train full of tired faces, bouncing from shoulder to shoulder like a pinball.

　　No place else he'd rather be.

　　"I don't need the money," Mr. O'Rourke explained. "I need the job."

　　Walter Joe O'Rourke, who never wed, is married to the rails. Despite earning more than what he estimated at $2 million last year from his investments, he chugs along as a conductor, earning a base salary of $52,000 a year.

　　"Pocket change," Mr. O'Rourke said. "But it keeps me doing the one thing I enjoy doing most." Born on Dec. 14, 1939, in Fort Worth, Mr. O'Rourke comes from a family of railway workers. Five of his six uncles worked rail jobs around Texas.

　　Raised in Miami, he joined a workshop at Miami Jackson High School and fell in love with the art of welding, and of cutting steel.

　　"The whole science of machining," Mr. O'Rourke said. "It's somewhat of a dying art these days.