Three years ago today, Trainjotting was born.

Yes, three years ago, we threw up a question and answer with Engine Bob, and Trainjotting had eked its way into the blogosphere.

Thanks to Mayor Bloomberg and MTA chief Jay Walder and of course President Obama for the birthday cards and well-wishes.

Thanks also to “Justin” for the nice note today:

TJ -

Love your site and read on a regular basis. These words of the week are always amusing and it would be great if you had some sort of “Dictionary” that was easily accessible and contained past and future entries.

Just an idea….

Big thanks to all the correspondents and contributors (JerseyJim, Straphanger Joe, Engine Bob, etc.) who’ve blessed the site with their wit and wisdom, but the biggest thanks go to the readers–those who chose to come to our site, and didn’t stumble upon Trainjotting by Googling ’train sex’ or ‘black drag queens’ or ‘where does don draper live.’

It gives me tremendous pleasure to announce the springtime publication of a book about a most unique train ride that chugged through our area nearly 65 years ago. In April 1945, a train hauling the giant bronze casket of Franklin Delano Roosevelt–not to mention some A-plus list political figures, including all nine Supreme Court justices, the entire Cabinet, ample Secret Service and perhaps even a KGB spy–made its way from Georgia up to Hyde Park, New York.

FDR’s Funeral Train: A Betrayed Widow, a Soviet Spy, and a Presidency in the Balance follows the high-wattage entourage as it wends its way along its 1,000 mile journey to Roosevelt’s final resting place. MacMillan publishes it in April and you can pre-order it on Amazon.

What makes me super-psyched is not just that the historic train ride at times went over Metro-North, New Jersey Transit and LIRR rails–unbeknownst to a sleeping Tri-State area, no less–but that it’s authored by Robert Klara–known to early Trainjotting readers as Engine Bob.

Klara penned the popular “Ask Engine Bob” column–exquisitely detailed and humorous answers to readers’ questions about railroad travel, Grand Central infrastructure and history, and train policy, in 2007. In fact, one column, about the mysteriously hidden Track 61 in Grand Central, actually touches on FDR riding the hidden rails into Grand Central and, we’d like to think, was the impetus for Klara’s book. We got some mad traffic on that one after Matt Lauer poked around on Track 61 on a special investigative Today show.

Engine Bob wrote: Arriving in the private Presidential railroad car-often arriving from his boyhood home in Hyde Park, just up the Hudson Line-FDR and his entourage would pull up to Track 61, alight, and take the elevator straight up to the hotel’s Presidential Suite. It must have been something to see.

Rob is also a good friend and, with TJ’s Rolodex lousy with wordsmiths, one of the top 2 or 3 writers I know. Rob is the kind of guy whose idea of a perfect Saturday is leafing through stacks of yellowing periodicals in the bowels of the New York Public Library to unearth heretofore little or unknown tidbits about New York history.

Like the tenacious reporter he is, Klara got a bunch of previously classified Secret Service documents declassified, and had some crazy fun with it. I can’t wait to see what Engine Bob comes up with.

By way of a synopsis:

Most commuters on Metro North, New Jersey Transit, and the LIRR are vaguely aware that the tracks they’re riding on have a history that predates the MTA. But check this out: Back during WWII, these lines were also part the most top-secret railroad journey of the 20th Century. 

FDR’s Funeral Train, a new book scheduled for release by Palgrave Macmillan in April of 2010, tells the incredible story of the special train that took the body of Franklin D. Roosevelt from Warm Springs, Georgia (where he died suddenly on April 12, 1945) to Hyde Park, New York, his boyhood home where he wished to be buried. Of course, everyone in America knew that FDR had died, so what was so secret? Not only did the train carry Roosevelt’s remains in a 700-pound bronze casket, it also carried the entire federal government—key members of the House and Senate, the entire Cabinet, President Harry S. Truman, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, plus all nine justices of the Supreme Court.

FDR’s funeral train will be released to coincide with the 65th anniversary of FDR’s death. You can find the book at all major booksellers and at Amazon.com. (ISBN-13: 978-0-230-61914-2)

As BobbyDerailed notes, tonight is the grand premiere of Extreme Trains on History Channel. According to the History Website, the show “reveals the incredible inner workings and past lives of the amazing locomotives that haul huge loads across the nation and deliver passengers to their destinations. The series shows the huge part these trains have played in shaping American history–and how vital trains are to American life today.”

The premiere, on at 10, shows a coal train chugging from mine to power plant across Pennsylvania.  

If Engine Bob had a TV, I know he’d be watching.

Finally got around to checking out the Grand Central documentary on PBS from the other night. It’s terrific, offering a painstakingly detailed look at the railroad’s transformation from steam to electric, Grand Central’s rivalry with that Joisey-accented west side upstart, Penn Station, and the sad tale of William Wilgus, the civil engineer who designed the transit system we know and love today.

There’s no shortage of tragedy in the tale, including the horrific crash of 1902, as the White Plains express blew through red lights and horns and hammered an idling train from New Rochelle in the Grand Central tunnel, killing 15. Photos of the old New Rochelle train station, looking something like a country farmhouse, are pretty cool.

Not long after the system was switched to electric–1907 or so–a train headed for White Plains jumped the track at Woodlawn, killing 20.

The doc also explains Wilgus’s concept of “taking wealth from the air” and selling the air rights above Grand Central to finance the project, the first documented case of selling air rights.

Sadly, Wilgus gets thrown under the bus by railroad brass after the Woodlawn incident. He was deemed “culpably negligent” because the crippling weight of the train’s engines caused the rails to widen; later designs better distributed the weight.

A variety of talking heads, from architects to historians to the esteemed writer Susan Eddy, who happens to be the Missus’s old boss, offer intriguing perspective. But I couldn’t help but wonder–how did they not have our own Engine Bob sharing Grand Central stuff that no one else knows?

Q: Engine Bob, why don’t have they have a no cell-phone “quiet car” on Metro North, like they do on Amtrak? Surely, enough quiet-seeking commuters could fill a train car? 

A: What a fine, fine question. My fingers are twitching already. In fact, hang on a sec while I take another blood-pressure pill, because your question has just reminded me of the afternoon, last year, that I took a New Haven train home to Manhattan from South Norwalk and had to listen to a… um… Okay, she was one badass gangsta ho.

And, sitting in the seat across the aisle from mine, she proceeded to whip our her cell phone and call each and every one of her “Bridgeport girls” (about eight in all) and regale each of them with tales (spoken at full volume) of her latest man’s considerable endowment—and I’m not talking about his investments.

Stuck on a packed train and unwilling to give up my seat for fear of not finding another, I listened to the gum-popping young lady for nearly two hours, all the time listening to my own voice, buried deep within me, and whimpering: “Why, oh why, can’t Metro North have just one car on which cell phones are banned?” 

Why, indeed. After all, you say, doesn’t Amtrak have such no-cell-phone cars? Damn right, sir, yes they do. Just one disclaimer before I continue, okay? I am about to reiterate the railroad’s position on this issue—NOT defend it or even, frankly, attempt to explain it. Because it would take Nero Wolfe to decipher the wisdom of this one. 

Metro North’s position on the matter boils down to two arguments. First, everybody needs a seat. When trains are packed—as, during rush hours, we all know they are—the railroad can’t adopt restricted-use cars because these might preclude some passengers from having a seat. (Interestingly, the no-cell-phone cars on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor trains operate along the same principle: Only on “non-capacity” trains where there are far more seats than passengers does the conductor have clearance to designate one of his coaches as a cell-phone-free zone.) Anyway, for Metro North, the policy is: All seats, all over the train, are for everyone. 

Yes, I know: Anyone CAN sit in a no-cell-phone car—he’s just not allowed to use his stinking cell phone when he does! Seems like a cogent enough argument. And it’s one that escorts me nicely to Metro North’s Argument No. 2. Are you ready? 

The First Amendment. 

Yes, this is what I was told when I pressed an MTA official on the cell-phone matter not too long ago. The railroad will not put itself in a position in which it risks being accused of restricting someone’s speech. But, you retort, the railroad would NOT be restricting speech—just the use of a device into which a passenger elects to speak. He could still say whatever he wishes to the open air, right? Removing a cell phone no more abridges the right of free speech than, say, removing a microphone from someone’s hand would—right? 

Right. But there comes a time when you know that even the best arguments are going to get you nowhere. And, with the Metro North official I’d managed to collar, I knew I had very quickly reached such a point. Argue all you want, Perry Mason, the policy’s not changing.

To be fair, the official was sympathetic: Yes, some people’s cell phone habits are deplorable, he said, and we’ve all “been there,” as he put it—meaning, presumably, stuck beside a Minnie Pearl who cackles into her phone all the way to Purdy’s. He also reminded me that Metro North conductors have of late been instructed to make a general announcement on crowded trains, asking people to please limit their cell-phone use “in consideration of your fellow passengers.” Such pleas, as we know, rank in effectiveness right up there with Manhattan’s jaywalking law—or the one strictly prohibiting the sale of Louis Vuitton knockoffs on Canal Street.

Meantime, sir, don’t get your hopes up about a no-cell-phone car on your train. Metro North is more likely to roll out a squash-court car first.

I got this emphatic answer to my question about the mysterious tennis court in Grand Central. Apparently, this appeared on yelp.com.

Recently, I had a unique experience at Grand Central that I will never forget. My friend and I were riding the elevator up to the Campbell Apartment and he was telling me that it’s a little known fact that there are tennis courts inside the terminal. I LOVE fun facts like this, and imagining what other hidden treasures there are inside this amazing structure.

As he was telling me this, the man riding up in the elevator with us said, “Yes, it’s true”, at which point we realized that there was someone there (taking off our New York blinders that block out anyone within eye contact range). Then he said, to my open-mouthed joy, “Would you like to see it?”

Turns out, we were in the company of the manager of the Tennis Club of Grand Central. It’s a private club now owned by Donald Trump, and plays host to some of the top seeded players of the US Open. This is not a club for your average Joe - fees are up to $170 for an hour of court time. Amazing considering that Trump found it laying dormant in the 80’s - laying dormant!!

Oh it makes me want to explore and explore, late at night with a flashlight. Anyway, the the space has even more history, as prior to the 1960’s it was used as the original set for CBS News, and was also where they filmed the first episode of the Honeymooners. To stand where Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite used to broadcast live was quite a treat, indeed. 

It’s written by a San Fran lady named Liz S. If she and Engine Bob were to go out for coffee, I think we’d pay for it.

Q: Engine Bob, I commute to New Jersey from Penn Station, which means my train runs beneath the Hudson River. Somebody once told me that those tunnels are so shallow that they’re not anchored to anything and they “swing” like garden hoses as trains run through them. It does sort of feel like the train is bouncing as it runs thorough. Don’t tell me this story is true. 

A: Okay, I won’t—because it’s not. The bounce you’re feeling is, alas, only the bounce of the suspension assembly on the pair of wheel trucks of your train (Train cars have suspension just like automobiles do, because even though rails are obviously smoother than a paved road, your butt riding on a steel wheel that hits an inch-wide rail gap at 80 m.p.h. is going to feel it, so the wheel assemblies use springs or hydraulics to prevent you from getting wrinkles before your natural time.)  

But, like I said, the answer’s no: Those tunnels—there are two of them, each about 23 feet in diameter—do not bounce. There is some minor “play” to them, but bounce is a bit extreme. (That said, it’s true that plenty of transportation structures have sway coefficients factored in; the Manhattan Bridge, for example, flexes a few inches as the subways run across it. Prior to its recent renovation, it was actually moving several feet, but that was, uh, a problem.) 

Anyway, the true story of the purportedly bouncing tunnel is, however, almost as cool as the myth. Begun in 1903, those tunnels were the first real-world manifestations of an engineering patent granted to British engineer Charles Jacobs. His invention was called the “Tunnel Bridge,” actually.

Didn’t happen to notice a bridge when you were down there last? Well, here’s how it worked. Excavated for the Pennsylvania Railroad, the “North River Tunnels,” as they’d been known, were made of interlocking iron (and sometimes steel) rings that were bolted together behind a massive drilling shield, inside which workers hand-dug through the river silt that was kept from inundating them by a high-pressure atmosphere artificially created inside the tunnel by huge air compressors up on the ground. (When a worker failed to spend enough time in the pressure-equalizing airlock, he’d come down with “the bends,” which you might have heard of before.) 

The tunnels rest at varying depths below the bottom of the river but, much like your last blind date, are surprisingly shallow—usually buried only about 20 feet in the muck. The bedrock is much further down, but tunneling through rock would have been impossible not so much because of the difficulty of the drilling, but because the trains couldn’t (and still can’t) climb grades much steeper than 2%, and diving down to bedrock level from either Manhattan or New Jersey would have required a really steep descents and ascents, since the river’s only about a mile wide.

Yeah, even in the Olden Days, life was just as complicated. 

So that’s where the “bridge” part came in. Every 15 feet, workers fitted the iron rings of the advancing tunnel with a “bore segment.” This was a special ring through the bottom of which would pass a long, thick screw. The sandhogs would crank that screw straight down until it reached the bedrock, then they’d drill it in nice and tight (please, no second reference to your last blind date.) And that maneuver anchored the tunnels. 

So, imagine your commuting tunnel now: It runs through the river mud, but since the mud’s not thick enough to support the enormous weight of the tunnel and its trains, you’ve got what are essentially legs—pilings, really, like you see on a pier—that hold the tunnel up and keep it in place. Sorry, then—no bounce.

But what’s really amazing is that those tunnels have been down there for a century. Hundreds of trains a day run through. And still—all safe.  

I don’t know where Charles Jacobs is buried, but I’d leave him a nice bouquet if I knew. 

—E.B.

Q: If my Metro North train is on the underground level, why do I have to go to street level from the (underground) subway, only to descend again for my Metro North train? Shouldn’t I be able to stay underground when going from the subway to the Metro North?
 
A: Well, if you think about it, you do stay underground for some of the transfers. To get from the Shuttle platform into Grand Central, for example, one only ascends a single stretch of stairs to reach the western corridor into the upper concourse and the Metro North tracks—and you remain underground the entire time. 

But, yeah, okay, I’m being an annoying shit—you’re talking about the 4, 5, and 6 subways, aren’t you? You want to know why in hell does the MTA send you all the way up to the street level merely to prolong the Bataan Death March back down to your Metro North train?

Good question. But let me split just one more hair before I answer you. If you’re talking about transferring from the 4, 5, and 6 trains (a/k/a the Lexington Avenue Line) to Grand Central’s upper-level tracks, you are pretty much being sent no higher than you have to be. The upper-level commuter tracks lie at the bottom of a very gentle slope off the terminal’s main concourse—and the concourse level is exactly as high as you climb (from platform up to mezzanine, then from mezzanine via escalator to the eastern corridor of the terminal) as you leave the subway. 

But if you’re talking about getting off the subway and hoofing it for a Metro North train on the lower-level tracks, well, I feel your pain. Your aching knees, specifically. Why do you have to go up to go down? Isn’t a more direct connection possible? 

Short answer: No—There’s too much shit in the way. 

Long answer: No—now, proceed with below. 

Let’s just establish some parameters first—with the understanding that the figures I furnish are merely estimates. Here are some fun facts for your next commuter cocktail party:
* Grand Central upper level tracks:­ 1 story down (about 20 feet)
* Grand Central lower level tracks:­ 2 stories down (about 60 feet)
* Subway Shuttle: 2 stories down (about 50 feet)
* Subway 4, 5, and 6 Grand Central station:­ 2 stories down (about 50 feet)
* Subway No. 7 Flushing Line is one deep-ass train—about 80 feet below the street—and too far below Metro North’s tracks to make it useful to include here. 

Now, I’ve already dealt with the Shuttle so we’ll leave that out. Let’s look at the Lexington Avenue Subway—how deep it is, and also where it is. First, the terminal’s lower-level tracks and the Lexington Avenue Subway trains are almost exactly at the same depth: Score 1 for your argument that there really ought to be a straight-line connection without ascending to street level. 

Second, Grand Central platforms of the 4, 5, and 6 trains are actually built on a 45-degree diagonal relative to the avenues. (This is, incidentally, because the Park Avenue portion of the subway opened in 1904 but the Lexington Avenue extension north was not opened until 1918. The subway had to literally move over from Park Avenue to Lexington, and that connecting stretch was where the subway station was put in.) The 4, 5, and 6 stop for Grand Central roughly cuts diagonally beneath the southeastern corner of the Terminal proper—in easy reach of the commuter tracks toward the terminal’s eastern side: Score 2 for your argument. So, again, why the hell isn’t there one? 

As referenced above: There is too much shit in the way. If you were to try to dig a passage leading from the 4, 5, and 6 platforms right into, say, the general area of Tracks 101 – 103 on the terminal’s lower level, you’re talking about having to cut through the foundation walls of the old Commodore (now Grand Hyatt) Hotel, a task made more nightmarish by the tightly-spaced grid of support columns—needed to carry the weight of the building above—that run the length of the subway’s platforms. But okay, say that you somehow manage to snake some stairs around all those girders and I-beams. Next, you’d have to blast through the foundation wall of Grand Central Itself. Such a thing is possible, I suppose—but, finally, you’d run into the figurative boulder that cannot be moved. 

When the railroad’s chief engineer William J. Wilgus planned out the track arrangements for the new Grand Central Terminal in 1903, he had to find a way to turn trains around quickly within the tight confines of its interlock. Wilgus did this by designing loop tracks on both levels. The loop tunnels curve around below the terminal’s façade, connecting the westernmost and easternmost tracks in the shape of a large horseshoe [for more about the loops and how you can experience them with family and friends, refer to the Engine Bob installment that immediately precedes this one.] Those loops are not as quaint as they sound; they’re massive tunnels, two—and in places three—tracks wide, with massive load-bearing walls enclosing them on both sides. There is no conceivable way that the terminal could ever sacrifice the operational advantage of the loop tracks (much less run up an expense that would rival the gross national product of France) by ramming a pedestrian passageway through them. And because the loop is two-stories deep and swings to the laterally widest points of the terminal’s track grid, there’s simply no way around them. 

Other, that is, than being led above them, then back down on their other side—which is exactly what you are made to do right now.

Q: Engine Bob, the other day I was using the men’s room near the bottom of the escalators that lead to the food court downstairs at Grand Central. Suddenly, there was a low rumbling noise that got pretty loud—and then, seriously, the whole room started to shake. Guys were looking around to see what was going on. Do you know what it was? 

A: Consider yourself lucky. You heard a sound that rarely echoes through the bowels of the terminal anymore—or the bowels in the men’s room, for that matter. (Sorry, that was cheap but I had to take it.) Anyway, the reason for this other kind of shakin’ goin’ on at the urinals (sorry, that was cheap, too, but I had to take it) is this: About a foot away, on the other side of the wall to which was bolted the porcelain commode into which you were relieving yourself, a commuter train was rumbling past. Past? But, don’t all the trains stop at the platform ends that are, like, way far away from the men’s room? Most of them do. But not all of them.  Now, the difficulty at this point is that there are two ways to go on with this question. There’s the Joe Commuter Explanation, and the Train Geek one. I’m a train geek but you are my guest, so I’ll indulge the former first and make the latter an optional read. Ready?  Joe Commuter Explanation: The train you heard was using one of the loop tunnels, which hook like an umbrella handle around beneath the 42nd Street facade of the terminal. The Upper Level has a loop and so does the Lower. The loops connect the extreme outside tracks on either side of the terminal (just think of a huge “U” with the passenger concourse nestled in the center, near the bottom, and you’ll get the picture.) Back in the day, the loops allowed trains that had come head-first into the terminal to be turned around and then switched back into the platform tracks, ready for an outbound trip. These days, because Metro North trains can be run forward from either end, turning isn’t really necessary, but it’s sometimes still done as a way to get a train from one side of the terminal to the other without cutting in front of other trains. Okay, that’s it. Good enough? Now, skip past the next paragraph. Train Geek Explanation: Midtown Manhattan was too expensive for yard space, so the Central was forced to assemble and turn its trains up at the Mott Haven Yards, just north of the Hudson/Harlem split in the Bronx. But Mott Haven was a good five miles from the terminal, and dispatchers needed a quicker way to turn a train if necessary. Chances are the crack limiteds—which needed cleaning and commissary re-stocking—wouldn’t be turned in the loops. But the loop tracks were very useful for turning, say, an all-coach train as well as getting trains from revenue tracks over into the layup tracks along Lexington Avenue for storage or servicing. The loops were also great for moving engines around. While there is one loop for each level, each loop in turn contained an inner and outer track at its narrowest point. Tracks 38, 39, and 40 converged into the Upper Level Inner Loop; Tracks 41 and 42 would join to form the Upper Level Outer Loop. If you sent a train southbound down any of these tracks, it would re-emerge on the other (eastern) side as Tracks 1, 2, and 3—which were and are part of the layup tracks skirting Lexington Avenue and not in revenue service. Meanwhile, on the Lower Level, the arrangement was a bit more complex, with Tracks 115, 116, and 117 merging for the Lower Inner Loop and Tracks 119-125 converging for the Outer. However, the Inner Loop tracks would branch off at the centerpoint of the turn, feeding into Tracks 101-103; while the Outer Loop would continue on the larger arc and become Track 100, also part of the yard area on the extreme eastern side of the interlock. One of the Inner Loop tracks would also continue off to join the Outer Loop, past the centerpoint branch-off.

Whew.] 

So anyway, the loops were a great idea—and still are, if one used only rarely. I’ve got two more things to add (and I know: You were just using the little boy’s room and did not want this much information. But listen, okay, because this is cool).  First, the Lower Level Loop continues on past the men’s room and skirts behind the wall of the Oyster Bar’s bar and then, in the dining room, behind its kitchen. If you’re seeking to experience one of the better—and ever vanishing—Classic New York Moments, you can still have one while sitting in the Oyster Bar as a train rumbles through. The vibration and noise of the train wheels scraping on the rails brings a respectful hush over the room, and also, depending on where you’re sitting, creates little shockwaves in your martini or your water glass (the clam chowder is too thick for this effect, I’ve surmised). Finally, about a decade ago I was way down by the bumper posts of the lower level tracks and noticed that some of the rails leading to the loop were being ripped up. I’d been down there, with my camera, with the ultra-intelligent idea of actually walking around one of the loops. The sight of a pitch-black maw with NO clearance on either side of the tracks assisted me with changing my mind. But later, I was talking with a motorman friend and I asked him if he’d ever had the chance to “ride the loop” at the throttle of a train. “Oh yeah,” he said. “I used to take the old diesels around in there. It’s like another world, man, let me tell you, spooky.” He paused, then said, “It’s like driving a train on the moon.” 

Imagine. All of that—on the other side of the wall where you stood peeing.

Fun piece in today’s Journal News about a guy who drives a Metro-North train every day. The reporter tags along with Kevin Mahoney, and this is what she learns: Senior people on the job pull strings to get on the Hudson Line, with its scenic views, engineer headquarters is the station at North White Plains, and an engineer’s pet peeves are people standing too close to the edge of the platform, riders who block his path to the cab, and people who walk on the tracks. (Mercifully, the third rail usually takes care of those ne’ever do wells.)

While it doesn’t offer the luscious detail of, say, Engine Bob, it’s a fun read. The story is here.