Nice feature in NY Times on a Metro-North conductor who makes everyone’s, or at least most people’s, commutes a tiny bit brighter.
The conductor is Timothy Curley.
Writes the Times:
You can travel the 82 miles fromGrand Central Terminalto the remote, pastoral station inWassaic, N.Y., with no more human engagement than the time it takes a conductor to punch your ticket and walk on.
Or you can wind up on Timothy P. Curley’s train.
More than a conductor, Mr. Curley is a local historian, madcap entertainer, therapist and occasional yenta, having once nudged a young man to hurry up and get the phone number of a young woman he had just begun to get to know but was about to let walk away. (The couple dated for two years.)
Mr. Curley has worked onMetro-North Railroad’sHarlemline since the early 1980s, but three years ago, he moved to the northernmost 29-mile stretch of the trip. As he shuttles what can sometimes be fewer than a dozen passengers, this Transcendental Meditation instructor-turned-conductor has found a mobile community where his eccentricities and engaging nature can thrive.
“If people have a soul,” he explains in a gravelly New York accent, “then I’m in the business of transporting human souls.”