Boy, did I think I was going to be early when the 8:17 chugged in to 125th at 8:49. Boy, was I wrong.

It took all of 18 minutes to get from 125th to Grand Central Terminal, well above the already painstaking 12-13 minutes it normally takes.

I want a full explanation waiting on my train seat when I leave the city today.

After visiting the accountant on the Upper East Side last night, I had the express pleasure of taking Metro North from 125th Street in Harlem, instead of my usual Grand Central launching pad.

The Harlem MTA station looks like it was at once grand, though cheap paneling like your neighbor’s old basement probably covers up much of the grandeur. It’s a big rectangle, about the size of a great loft apartment, smack in the middle of the ghetto. It’s a block west of the 4-5-6 subway stop, prompting one to wonder why they’re not all one and the same; perhaps that’s a question for Engine Bob.

While the homeless are out in full force outside the station–even on a rainy Thursday at 9 p.m.–it’s well-policed inside, with an officer sitting in an office whose door is marked with a huge NYPD logo for all to see, and others on foot.

Framed photos dot the walls and tell the story of the station’s overhaul in the past decade, so presumably this is as good as it gets at 125th. Further hampering the design, one of those giant three-headed blue garbage depots (slots for plastics/paper/regular garbage) sits in the middle of the room.

The view from the platform is kind of neat, with the baby blue erector set approach to the Triboro on one end, the famous Apollo Theater on another end, and bustling 125th below.

The building next to the platform held some sort of art installment: lights shining through green and pink fabric, with silhouettes of animals (eagles, moose, rhinos) affixed to the walls. Weird, especially after a long day.

Once on board, I squeezed in next to an old Hassidic key who did word searches with themes like “Parts of a Typewriter” (Home Row…Carriage…etc.). Once he completed a puzzle, he tore it out, folded it and place d it in his knapsack, like he was going to show his handiwork to his wife.

Two construction workers volubly discussed their income; one shouted his weekly takehome ($630!…no, $625!) for all the train to hear, while the other fiddled with a calculator.

Long day. I sprung for a cab at Hawthorne Station.

Yesterday, it was snow, sleet, freezing rain and locusts falling from the sky (”I’m shoveling Margaritas,” one Brooklyn maintenance man told the Times), and the train was all of two minutes late.

Today, it was sunny and clear, though butt-cold. And what hell awaited me on the 8:17. The train pulled up at 8:21 — not unexpected on the heels of a Nor-easter. We were going slow past White Plains and Scarsdale, and probably on course to be a bit late.

But that was OK. I had a two-seater to myself. I had the papers, the iPod and the new BlackBerry.

Then we slowed to a trickle somewhere between Fleetwood and Mount Vernon West. Then, at 8:52 — when we’re usually pulling into 125th – we slowed to a dead stop.

“We’ve got a switch failure,” said the conductor. “There are a couple trains ahead of us, then they’ll let us go. Should be 5-10 minutes.”

People called work. People shuffled. Other trains flew by. Why hadn’t their switch failed?

The conductor came on four minutes later. “They’re on the scene, working on the switch failure,” he said. “We’ll keep you posted.”

I got a little nervous. I hadn’t realized there were fix-it guys involved. I had no water. I had no food since I’d eaten my “emergency” granola bar a month ago and never replaced it. I was done with the Times (though saving Sports for lunch…spring training!) and half done with the Journal. I should’ve saved the Money section, instead of throwing it out. Why hadn’t I packed an emergency book?

At the stroke of 9, the man came back on. “The switch failure has been…uh…solved,” he said. We started moving.

It was a crawl the rest of the way, along with another dead stop under the 153rd Street sign in the Bronx, when I actually thought of busting through a window and walking.

We got in at 9:41. That’s 36 minutes late; even by Metro North’s generous “on time” standards, that’s just plain late.  

Dreadful commute? Let us know: trainjotting@gmail.com.

Sprinted to catch the 7:52 after a long day at work. The train was jammed, and I eyed a two-seater occupied by a large man in the window seat. He gave me the look: Don’t do it. I did it, my side scraping along the armrest as I sat, before the hard rubber found a spot between my ribs.

Was he going to slide over and give me an inch or two? Was he too big to do so? Maybe so–his knees brushed against the seat in front of us, his wrists poked out of the fake wool trim at the end of his sleeves. I’m 6’ 2” and I barely fit in the seat. A bigger guy wouldn’t have much—any?–room to spare.

He didn’t budge. I tried to peer at his ticket, resting against a book with “Murder” in the title, to see how long we’d be sharing for. Couldn’t get a clear look.

As we pulled out of 125^th he called his wife.

“White Plains is the next stop,” he said. My hopes picked up. He was getting off in 20 minutes.

“Then North White Plains,” he added. Four extra minutes.

He told his wife to leave the door unlocked. He asked about his sons; I despised him less.

The conductor came around for tickets. I nearly had to molest the guy to get my wallet out of my back pocket.

Time passed. It always does. The man began his exit after
White Plains. He stood to his full length. 6’ 2”. Same as me.

Fucker.

Q: “Why the hell does it take a Metro North train 15 minutes to get from Grand Central to 125^th Street?” 

A: Actually, it only takes 10 minutes (check any schedule) but it can seem like 15 minutes or even longer. The distance covered is actually 80 blocks (45th Street, which is roughly where the nose ends of the train are on the GCT platforms, up to 125th = 80 blocks.) And that’s four miles. First off, because a passenger sees little more than blackness outside the window, his sense of distance and time can become a little impaired. Still, 10 minutes to go four miles is only 24 m.p.h.—truly a crawl when you consider that even subways can hit close to 60 m.p.h. under the East River. So what gives with the delay? The principal reasons are two. Reason No. 1: Even though the complex was completed back in 1913, Grand Central’s trackage still constitutes the largest interlock in the world. You’ve got 41 tracks on the upper level, 26 on the lower—plus various layup tracks and sidings. All of these tracks eventually merge into a four-track mainline on one level just below street, which becomes the south end of the Park Avenue Tunnel.  Okay, so you’ve got all of these tracks moving up toward a bottleneck—crossing and converging in an ever-narrowing space. A switch governs each spot where two tracks meet, and here the train wheels have to roll over a small but significant gap in the rail. A train MUST go slowly when it crosses a switch, or the train could derail. And so, because the trains cross scores of switches on their way north, they CRAWL through the interlock—and that takes time. The tracks finally converge into the four-track mainline at roughly 51^st Street, but that’s six city blocks’ worth of switches that a Metro North train must navigate. If you’d like to see just how incredibly complex the GCT interlock is, go here for a look at the upper-level schematic:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:RailUS_GCT-upperTracksPlan.gif 

If your train happens to be departing from the lower level, the trip can take even longer. Why? Because the train has to literally climb a ramp to the upper level. Most mainline railroads avoid grades steeper than 2%; the inclined tracks that climb between levels in Grand Central range between 2.6% and 3%. This is a difficult climb for a train, even an electric one, and it takes a while.  Reason No. 2: Once your train has finally made it out of the interlock, another delay arrives to ruin your evening. In railroad parlance, you’re under a “speed restriction.” This will slow up the rate of your train for the next several miles. The restrictions are tightest within the Park Avenue Tunnel, but the reason for any speed restriction is the same: Safety. The slower a train is moving, the less chance it stands of colliding with another train. And the sheer number of trains you’ll find in the Grand Central complex at any given time is going to be far greater than what you’d see at most points up the line. Think about it: At poor old Purdy’s, for example, you might see two trains an hour, one northbound and one south. But at peak rush down at GCT, you might have a train coming in or leaving every five minutes. From the earliest days, then, back when the New York Central Railroad operated the line now known as Metro North, the GCT track region has been under speed restrictions that become progressively stricter the closer a train gets to the terminal itself. I’m using an old-time manual for the following numbers, and the speeds may have changed a bit—but the concept remains the same. A train moving anywhere between Woodlawn and Melrose in the Bronx is free to go up to 60 m.p.h., but on the stretch between Melrose and 62^nd Street inside the Park Avenue Tunnel, the speed limit is 35 m.p.h. If a train is operating anywhere below 62^nd Street—in the tunnel or within the interlock itself, the speeds are between 6 and 10 m.p.h.  But next time you’re on your train leaving GCT, take note of the change in speed restriction zones. Once your train reaches 62^nd Street (easy to find, because there’s an emergency exit platform at 59^th Street that’s lit up), you’ll notice that you’ll start moving at a nice clip. By the time you blow out of the tunnel’s mouth at 98^th Street, you’re going far faster than you had been back when your train was navigating the interlock. 

Still wanna know more? Speed are further restricted via what’s known as the “block” system—used in most all railroads—that operates on a simple principle: If you wish to avoid collisions (and who wouldn’t?) two trains cannot be in the same spot at the same time. A block, then, is a stretch of track inside which only one train can be at a given time. During peak hours at Grand Central, when you’ve got many trains having to share a mere four tracks in the Park Avenue Tunnel, it’s much more likely that one train will get too close to the block that another train is in. If it does, it has to slow down. Within the interlock and the Tunnel, blocks are easy to see. Stand in the head-end car and look out the front window and you’ll notice devices that resemble traffic lights that are bolted to the right-hand wall or standing freely on the same side. Each block of track is marked off by one of those banks of lights. If the light is red, it means there’s a train in the block ahead of the one your train is in—and the motorman must stop the train before he reaches the light. (If he runs it, by the way, he’s looking at one week’s suspension without pay, at the very least.) If the light is yellow, your train must slow down because the train ahead of you is just leaving its block. And if the light’s green, well, you’re free to roam. And so, your train’s speed as it departs GCT can also be affected by the number of other trains operating in the same area. Because the trains must remain at least a track block apart, slow-downs are inevitable. More recently, signal blocks have been augmented by the “cab signal” system. Instead of watching out for lights, the motorman listens for a rapid series of beeps that sound in his cab should his train be getting too close to another train ahead. The beeps or the lights are both triggered electrically by a system that senses a train’s presence within a given block through the axle that connects both tracks to form a circuit. If you’re sitting near the cab in the head-end car, the beeps are easy to hear, and when you do hear them, you’ll notice that your train will immediately slow down. Be it cab signal or block signal, the idea’s the same: keep the trains apart. But keeping them apart often means delaying them—and that adds time to your commute. And that, those of you who are still awake, is why it takes 10 minutes to get from Grand Central to 125th Street. —Engine Bob