As promised, with Dad in town, we poked and prodded for a few tales from commuting into the city from decades past. Some highlights:

* The woman who boarded the train with a crowbar in the summer to open those sticky windows on the old Erie Lackawanna cars. (Air conditioning was limited to the ice in your drink.)

* Engineers who’d actually keep the train waiting for you in the station when they saw your car flying into the parking lot.

* Wicker seats on the old Erie Lackawanna cars, which sometimes ripped double-knit suits. (Foreshadowing the M7’s suit-shredding armrests of today?)

* “Bathrooms” whose toilets were nothing but open-air portals to the tracks below.