8:16 hurtling toward Gotham this morn.

Conductor comes around for tickets. The man in front of me is Hispanic, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. He’s snoozing.

“Tickets, please,” says the conductor, a normal looking man, about 40, black.

The Hispanic man wakes up. He doesn’t have a ticket.

“Where you going?” asks the conductor. All eyes gradually shift to the scene. It’s more interesting than the Monday Journal.

The man mumbles something.

“Fourteen dollars,” says the conductor. “You owe me $14.”

The Hispanic man mumbles again. The conductor walks away to punch more tickets.

He returns about 10 minutes later.

“Fourteen dollars,” he says, then in Spanish (catorce?). “You owe me money.”

The conductor is not rude, not disrespectful. Just direct.

“Next stop is 125th,” says the conductor. “Where you trying to go?”

The rider mumbles something about Mt. Kisco, then “Plezz.”

“Pleasantville?” says the conductor. “Mt. Kisco? You’re goin’ the wrong way.”

The conductor realizes he’s not getting money out of the man. He walks over to the vestibule and writes something on a ticket receipt. He returns to the Hispanic man.

“Get off at 125th Street,” he says. “Tell the conductor you’re going to Mt. Kisco.”

He hands the man the receipt. That’s what it says, Mt. Kisco–so the Hispanic man can simply show it to the conductor.

“I’m not going to charge you,” says the conductor, and walks away.

From Overheard in New York:

Conductor: Fordham, this is the Fordham stop. You may exit here, but please, no new passengers are to get on at this stop. Sir, I said no passengers may get on the train… Anyone wearing a brown jacket may not get on at this stop. Sir, you, in the brown jacket. I see you. Yes, you sir, in the brown jacket who just got on the train. Of course I’m talking to you, genius… Thank you. Grand Central, next stop.

ConnecticEnergy tells us about an interesting flare-up on the train from Stamford this morning. A woman with no ticket–and, apparently, no money–was getting grilled fairly hard by the conductor.  She was giving it back to the conductor with some vehemence as well, enough to yank some commuters out of their sleep, newspaper, Blackberry, etc.

After a few minutes of pyrotechnics, a man–nattily dressed, black–from a few rows back spoke up, said he’d cover the woman’s fare, and extended a 20 to the conductor.

You’d think it would end there, but it didn’t. The conductor continued to dress down the woman (she was black as well) even after taking the man’s money and issuing a ticket. The well-dressed man spoke up, something to the effect of, she’s got a ticket, leave her alone.

The conductor made it clear to the well-dressed man, the woman who had no ticket, and everyone else on board, for that matter, that the woman really, truly needed to understand that she was not to ride trains without tickets.

ConnecticEnergy seemed to think he was a bit hard on her.

NY Times reporter Billie Cohen, who’s commuting from a different corner of the New York metropolitan area every day this month, tipped a few with the regulars on the New Haven Line bar car.

“There was beer everywhere, a crowd at the bar, a bunch of people playing poker and a din of friendly talk and loud laughter. What was this place? It was definitely not the normal commute home,” she writes about Wednesday’s 5:23 to Bridgeport. “It had the feel of, well, a party.”

Cohen mentions people falling in love in the bar car, and some of the regulars assigning Cheers characters to each other. (I’m Norm. No, I’m Norm!)

She also rightfully points out the New Haven Line’s mechanical shortcomings. “The equipment on this line is the oldest in the Metro-North fleet,” she says, “and is subject to many hiccups.

But Cohen saves the best part for last–a little perspective from a seasoned conductor who’s none other than Bobby McDonough, author of the esteemed Derailed blog and the subject of our seminal Q&A on rude riders and transvestites.

“I’m not really a fan of the bar car,” said McDonough. “Everyone thinks they’re funny when they’ve had two drinks in them. They’re not.”

Connectic Energy tells us a rail tail about his ride back to Stamford after a media-industry wingding last night. Some burly guy boards with a pair of tallboys, wearing a mug that looks like he’s already downed a half-dozen of them.

The guy’s got the gift of the gab, chatting away at everyone within earshot, especially the pair of comely young ladies seated nearby, who find themselves laughing along with his ‘let’s turn this train ride into a party’ routine.

The guy is inviting fellow riders over to his five-seater with lines like, ‘c’mon, you KNOW you wanna join us’, some are actually taking him up on it, and everyone’s sharing a good laugh.

The conductor comes around. Mr. Big Jokey Guy even tries to pull the Man in Blue into his web of bon homie, riffing along the lines of, “What if I don’t have a ticket? What if I just don’t have one? What would you do?”

The conductor apparently missed the wink, the nudge, whatever cue the Big Jokey Guy offers. Or he simply wanted to punch his tickets and get his job done.

After several awkward moments, Big Jokey Guy pulls out his ticket, and tries to show the conductor it was all a big joke. All in fun, dude!

Conductor doesn’t see it that way, angrily shaking his head and storming on to the next rider.

Unfortunately, no one in Big Jokey Guy’s new social circle sees it that way either. Silence envelopes the car, and people gradually start inching away from him–returning to their books, their Blackberrys, their sleep.

Party’s over.

He entered the train car, and an iron curtain of stink fell upon the entire car.

No, it wasn’t a homeless guy on the 6 train.

It was a cologne-doused conductor on the Metro-North.

He was a small man, with a trim moustache, Latin coloring and a giant wristwatch. The smell was completely overpowering, as in, you knew he was in the car when he was 20 feet away, you couldn’t breathe through your noise as he approached, and it took a good five minutes for the air to clear after he’d left.

He’d walked into our car while we were still in the Grand Central tunnel. As he checked tickets and walked through the back door, I actually turned my face toward the open door to take in a large gulp of carbon-monoxide-laced tunnel air for relief. Had there been a bathroom in the car, opening that door might’ve provided relief as well.

I’m generally a live and let live kind of guy. But someone–his wife, his friends, his co-workers–has to tell this guy that he’s laying the perfume on a wee bit thick.

Whether it’s TJ or CTRider or Straphanger Joe, we hear plenty from riders of New York’s rails. But what about the other half of the commuter equation, the workers? Toward that end, Trainjotting sat with veteran Metro-North conductor Bobby McDonough, author of the blog Derailed, to check out the commuting game from his perspective.

1.    What’s the craziest thing you ever saw after 21 years on the job?

I once caught two couples having a mini-orgy on one of the late night trains. Passengers having sex on the train is more common than you might think, but this is the only time I caught two couples in action (I was more embarrassed than they were). 

The craziest rider award goes to “Rocky,” a 6′4″ cross dresser who regularly rides our rails (all three lines).  He usually boards the train as a man, but like a sexually ambiguous Superman, he’ll run into a nearby train lavatory and come out dressed in pink hot pants (with the words “BOY TOY” emblazoned on the back), a halter-top, a feather boa, black platform leather boots and a Tina Turner wig.  You should see the look on the other passengers’ faces. It’s priceless.   

On a more serious note, the days following 9/11 were definitely the strangest.  Read my post about it here:

2.    Riders give Metro-North conductors high approval ratings. What grade do you give riders? 

My knee-jerk reaction was to give riders poor grades, but that’s because I usually work late night trains when everybody’s drunk and obnoxious. Outside of this demographic, I’d give our passengers a “B.” Most people merely ask us to get them from Point A, to Point B, in a safe, considerate and timely manner. When we don’t meet these expectations, they get a little upset …I can’t fault them for that.  

If they’d only clean up after themselves, they’d get a B+.  

3.    Does the MTA know about your conductor blog? Do they care? 

“Derailed” was mentioned in the “Commuters Journal” section of the New York Times last year, and The New Haven Register recently did an article on me.

Both of these articles are posted on the MTA ’s company website, so I guess they’re vaguely aware of me and my blog.  I try to be careful and not write anything that would embarrass, or in any way damage the company. 

4.    If I could implement one rule for Metro-North, it would be…

Communicate…communicate…communicate. I have seen some progress in this area over the past few years, but when the #@%* hits the fan, communication between company and passengers breaks down. I agree that conductors could do a better job communicating as well, but we’re usually left as clueless as the passengers.  

5.    Which stop has the best riders? The worst?

When my wife was a child, she’d ask her mother, “Which one of us kids do you like best?” Her mother would answer… “I dislike you all equally.”  

That’s kind of the way I feel about our stations. Each one has its own unique personality, some good qualities, some not so good.  For example, riders from wealthy towns are usually bright and interesting people, but they also tend to be demanding…Some are downright arrogant, (the phrases “I’ll have your job” and “You work for me” come to mind.)

Stations in urban areas are full of hard-working, “salt of the earth” type of people, but it’s here that we find most of our fare evasion problems.  

Conductors say that Harlem Line passengers are by far the nicest, most polite people on Metro-North territory.  Hudson Line passengers, they say, are a close second. Rumor has it that they say “please” and “thank you” over there.  When we New Haven Line conductors hear these stories, we stand with mouths agape in disbelief.

The kid was wearing a tight white United Way t-shirt, and he had the charity thing down to a science. He was maybe 17, in long denim shirts, his attention focused on a P2P video game in which shooting people appeared to be the goal. It was the 7:22 to Southeast, and he had an off-peak ticket for White Plains.

The conductor, a tall no-nonsense woman in schoolmarm glasses, happened by. The kid offered his ticket. “That’ll be $2.50,” she said, the add-on for a peak train.

As visions of “My Dog Ate My Ticket” flashed through my brain, the kid fished through his pockets.

“I only have a dollar,” he said.

The conductor fumed.

“You didn’t hear the 19 announcements I made?” she asked.

The kid shrugged.

Scam #1 was done. On to Scam #2.

Twenty-five minutes later, the train ambled into White Plains. Seated on the aisle, I got my stuff together to get up and let the kid out. We stopped. He kept shooting at the bad guys on his P2P. Do I say something, like, “Hey, buddy, it’s White Plains”? I did not.

As the train left White Plains, I expected the kid to leap to his feet upon realizing he’d missed his stop. He did not.

I got off three stops later, and the kid was still on.

A $6.25 ride to Mt. Kisco, or Brewster, or Southeast. Well played, son.