DEATH ON THE L.I.R.R  Portrait of Boiling Resentment

And in the last several months, he would call state workers compensation officials and the offices of Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and Lieut. Gov. Stan Lundine to complain about his compensation case stemming from a job injury in 1989.

The Brooklyn man accused of opening fire on a Long Island Rail Road train Tuesday was an unemployed loner who, within the time of three years, had gone from making the dean's list at a Long Island college to surviving on odd jobs in his Brooklyn neighborhood.

Notes that the police said Colin Ferguson carried in his pocket at the time of his rampage offer a portrait of a man filled with seething resentment: toward the whites and Asians he met and believed were racist; to the black attorneys he said refused to help him, to the elderly woman who rented him a room inside her Brooklyn home.

In February 1992, he was arrested and charged with harassing a woman on the subway. The case never went to trial, but he later sent letters to New York City's Police Commissioner and others complaining that his arrest was "viscous and racist." In September or October, a lawyer said, he threatened members of a law firm, telling them of a massacre that had happened in California. And in the last several months, he would call state workers compensation officials and the offices of Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and Lieut. Gov. Stan Lundine to complain about his compensation case stemming from a job injury in 1989.

Yesterday, police officials, neighbors and acquaintances tried to understand what compelled the 35-year-old Mr. Ferguson to carry out the shootings. But the most telling clues may have been in the four pieces of notebook paper that investigators said he carried in his pocket Tuesday night, scribbled with a rambling explanation for the shootings.

He wrote in one of the notes of the "sloppy running of the #2 train," and "so-called civil right leaders such as the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, C. Vernon Mason, and Calvin Butts."

He also cited "racism by Caucasians and Uncle Tom Negroes."

Included in the notes were the names and telephone numbers of the state's Lieutenant Governor, the Attorney General's office, and a Manhattan law firm where lawyers were compelled to lock the door of an inner office after Mr. Ferguson called and threatened them, a lawyer with the firm said. 'I Felt Uncomfortable'

The attorney, Lauren Abramson, remembered when Mr. Ferguson asked for a consultation about a year ago. She said that from the beginning she felt something was wrong. "I brought in a law clerk because I did not want to be alone with him," she said. "I've never done that before. I felt uncomfortable."

Though Mr. Ferguson was neatly dressed, be behaved oddly, giving her a false name before telling his real one, she said. Months later, he called and threatened the firm, she said.

"He feels discriminated against by everything and everyone," she said.

Yesterday, in a Long Island courtroom, Mr. Ferguson said nothing. As he was arraigned, he stood quietly, and did not enter a plea. He is being held without bail.

For the last two years, Mr. Ferguson had rented a room in Brooklyn from an elderly Haitian woman. But he began his life in Kingston, Jamaica, where he was born Jan. 14, 1958.

The son of a pharmacist, Mr. Ferguson was a well-rounded student who played cricket and soccer, said Joseph Earle, principal of Calabar High School in Kingston, which Mr. Ferguson attended.

While Mr. Ferguson was still a teen-ager, his father was killed in a car crash, Mr. Earle said, and his mother died soon after. Difficulties in Class

Mr. Ferguson made his way to the United States in 1982, and enrolled in Nassau Community College, where he made the dean's list in 1990. But Mr. Ferguson was forced to leave a class after a disciplinary hearing found that he had been overly aggressive toward the teacher, said a county official who insisted on anonymity. Mr. Ferguson later took the class again and received an A. He transferred to Adelphi in the fall of 1990.

There he majored in business administration, school officials said. But in June 1991, he was suspended for disciplinary reasons that officials declined to explain because of confidentiality rules. An official added that Mr. Ferguson was welcome to reapply after his suspension expired, but that he had not chosen to do so.

Mr. Ferguson also did clerical work for a company called Ademco Security Group in Syosset, L.I., but filed a workers compensation claim in April 1989, after he injured his head, neck and back by falling off a stool, said Barbara Patton, chairwoman of the New York State Workers Compensation Board. In September 1992, he was awarded $26,250, but last April, he tried to reopen the case, claiming the money was not enough.

"This agency bent over backwards for Mr. Ferguson," Ms. Patton said, noting that the agency had re-examined the case because of his persistence. "There is nothing that we ever saw in this man to lead us to think he would do something like this."

In Flatbush, the working-class Brooklyn neighborhood where he lived among many other West Indian immigrants, neighbors spoke of Mr. Ferguson as a quiet loner who seldom spoke. When he did, he said little more than a hello.

For a year, Catherine Workman and her six children lived next door to him. She recalled how neat he was, always dressed in a sweatsuit and crisp white T-shirt. She remembered standing in her doorway, seeing him walk down the street. And she remembered his silence.

"He never talked to me," she said. "He never smiled. He never looked at me. I'd look at him and he'd turn the other way."

DEATH ON LIRR NYTIMES