Fearing that too many riders thought “Slippery Rail” was the reason LIRR workers gave for their bum knees and sore backs on their disability forms, the MTA issued printouts on Metro-North yesterday informing riders of the autumnal peril alternately known as Slippery Rail and Slip-Slide.

“This condition is created by a slimy substance left by crushed leaves on our rails that gets even more slippery and slimy after it rains,” it reads. “When a train attempts to speed up or slow down, this gelatinous “slime” can cause the wheels to slip or slide along the rails. In severe cases the train will automatically make an emergency stop, because the on-board computer system perceives “slip-sliding” as excessive speed.”

Slipping-sliding cars get flat wheels, the MTA explains, the cars are taken out of service to make the wheels round again, and riders are jammed into sometimes half the number of cars as is normal.  

The “ditto,” as we called them several decades ago, then explains the various measures the MTA is employing to combat Slippery Rail, such as reprogramming the software of the M7 fleet to allow the braking system to adjust to slip-slide conditions, reducing speeds through leafy patches, using rail-washers and scrubbers to remove dead leaves from tracks, and also shooting sand onto the tracks to make them grippier. (Yes, we just made up “grippier.”)

These measures actually made Slippery Rail a non-factor last year. (If I recall, the leaves started falling much later last year.) Will Metro-North win the battle again this year?

The leaves are falling faster than the Dow. Every day, the giant tree at the entrance to the Hummerville train station gets a little more sparse, the pile below it a little thicker.

The chilly air finds every gap in your coat’s defenses as your bike flies down Broad Street.

It’s just about dark when you get home from work.

Instead of people in Yankee jerseys on the 6 and Mets fans in Grand Central, it’s dopey Rangers fans milling about in our train stations. Fans of a game played on ice.

The outdoor patio at Pershing Square, across from Grand Central, shrinks commensurate to the big tree in Hummerville. Each week, a few more tables are taken away, until everyone is moved inside until spring.

I never really minded the encroaching cold seasons when I lived in the city. Most of my fun happened indoors anyway, often in places with the prefix “Mc.” (No, not McDonald’s.) Cold weather was just something you dealt with during short hops from Place A to Place B.

Now I come to dread the cold months, the mornings where it’s too cold to bike, too cold to play with Little G outside. I dread switching the clocks in a few weeks, and having it be freakin’ dark when I leave work. I dread the onset of Slippery Rail season, though Metro-North did a wondrous job slaying that infernal beast last late-fall.

I’ve noticed a distinct aroma as I ride home these days–the thick smell of fireplace smoke, much thicker and much earlier in the season as everyone dreads that first Con Ed bill that equals a week’s wages.

Five months till spring.

I thought I was in for hellish rides both yesterday, as a determined snowfall blanketed the area, and this morning, as a nasty freezing rain turned the whole thing into a gloopy wet mess.

In fact, Metro-North came up aces on both rides, actually coming in a minute early on last night’s 5:46 and this morning’s 8:16.

Metro-North conquered slippery rail. Based on its performance the past 24 hours, it presumably conquered snow, sleet and slush. What will I have left to write about?

As we suspected, the dreaded Slippery Rail phenomenon has indeed been snuffed out by quick thinking Metro-North brass. Here we are in December, and except for an occasional skid past a station platform (why is it always Valhalla?), we’ve experienced no car shortages, no massive delays, nothing of the usual late-fall misery brought on by fallen leaves.

What gives?

“We reconfigured the software on the M7 so the cars don’t overreact to skidding,” says Dan Brucker of Metro-North. “That stops the wheels from locking up.”

Metro-North has also invested heavily in its “Waterworld” project, which involves affixing Kevin Coster to the front of trains to blast offensive debris from the rails.

Brucker says there’s no been a substantial number of cars taken out of commission to fix flat wheels. “Not that I’m aware of,” he says. “We’re actually doing alright.”

Here we are in the waning days of November, and I can’t say that I’ve seen much evidence of that dastardly commuter scourge known as Slippery Rail/Slip-Slip/The Worst F***ing Thing About Commuting in the Northeast.

Granted, I’ve only lived through one fall season of riding the rails, and didn’t even have this little ol’ cyber soapbox last year, so I don’t have much frame of reference. But I seem to remember cars being out of commission this time last year, our fleet of 8 knocked down to 6, to 5, to freakin’ 4 for the tightest ride since those 18 kooky college kids piled into the VW Beetle.  

Maybe the worst is yet ahead. Then again, just about every last leaf is down from the tree, so if ever the failed foliage were to plot their havoc on the train tracks, I’d think now would be the time.

Could it be that Metro-North’s multipronged plan to thwart the tyranny of oily leaf residue–shooting sand and alkaline onto the tracks, scrubbing them from moving trains with steel brushes, and a fearsome contraption dubbed Waterworld–is actually working?

I put a call in to Metro-North to find out.

In the meantime, I’m just enjoying the ride.

(Boy, is it hard to type while simultaneously keeping fingers crossed and knocking on wood.)

With the dreaded Slippery Rail season just about upon us, Metro-North is announcing a major campaign designed to fight those nasty leaves that wreak such tremendous havoc for the railroad and its riders.

In short, falling leaves leave an oily residue on the tracks. Cars slide on the residue, wheels lock up, skid and flatten, trains are taken off the rails, and riders are jammed tighter than the mosh pit at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel from mid-October on into December.

Tomorrow, Metro-North will conduct a demonstration of “Waterworld”, its “aviation jet engine” that blows leaves away, along with a “rail scrubber,” a series of brushes that wash the tops of the rail.

The demonstration takes place at the North White Plains railyard t0morrow at 10:30.

Spokesperson Marjorie Anders seems genuinely optimistic about this season’s Slippery Rail battle. “There are a number of innovations we’ve made, in terms of computer technology and mechanical improvements,” she told Trainjotting. “No railroad can get rid of all the leaves and rain, but we can make progress. We hope to do better than past years.”

After the great fun we had in charting Metro-North’s on-time percentage–and allowing for 59 seconds of tardiness, as opposed to the 5:59 Metro-North gives itself–we’re going to do it again.

Yes, starting on Monday, Trainjotting will bust out the stopwatch (mind you, the Brit term “trainspotting” means just that–charting trains’ times, not shooting dope while collecting checks on the dole with friends Spud and Sick Boy), and keep tabs on Metro-North for the month of October.

October seems like a fair month: the trains’ progress should not be affected by vacations, such as with the summer, and the dreaded slippery rail season, which sees cars slip, slide and skid out of commission and riders squeezed together tighter than Dewey’s Flatiron at Friday happy hour, won’t be upon us until November.

We put Metro-North to the test in July, and the railroad came through with a 41% on-time rate for the 32-odd rides we took that month. It’s a far cry from the 98-99% scores Metro-North gives itself, based on its generous 6-minute-late cushion. We were pressing MTA headquarters for a comment/excuse at the time, then backed off when that steam pipe burst.

Game on!

Yes, I recorded my worst-ever ride on Metro-North yesterday in eight months of commuting. Worse than anything encountered during Slippery Rail Season, worse than during those Noreasters, even worse than when Joey From 5A and I hobbled through Hartsdale during last month’s near tornado.

Yesterday’s 6:10 started like any other ride, until we got over the bridge and into the Bronx. We sat facing a makeshift garbage dump for several minutes; adding insult to injury, several trains mockingly screamed by.

We ambled along, slower than usual, then hit another dead stop somewhere in Mount Vernon. Like the subway circa 1992, a man got on the loudspeaker and garbled something unintelligible.

We then crawled from Mount Vernon into White Plains, admiring all those things along the tracks you don’t normally get to see at cruising speed, such as that tiny steel bridge in Scarsdale.

Riders, to their credit, didn’t really grumble. They took advantage of the extra time to read, sleep and for the most part not talk on their phones.  (It seems as though some veteran commuters actually prefer delays because it means less time with family. I sincerely hope this never happens to me.)

As we got to White Plains–nearly an hour after leaving GCT–the loudspeaker came on. “Ladies and gentlemen, White Plains will be our next stop,” the man said. “Please remember to take all personal belongings.”

Uh, what about the half-hour delay? 

“Once again,” he continued, “there’s been a lot of congestion due to…”

Again, the loudspeaker went garbled, but it sounded something like a tree down on the tracks.  

When we finally pulled into Hawthorne at 7:18–fully 26 minutes late–the Missus was there to give my weary ass a ride. The side window had fallen out of the minivan earlier, and Little G refused to be dressed. So my first glimpse at the family was my toddler wearing only a diaper, through the empty window frame in the van.

When did I get so white trash?

Metro-North is hard at work to avoid the annual late-fall fiasco known as slippery-rail season, which means falling leaves leave oil on the tracks, cars skid and have to be taken out of commission, and cars are so packed they resemble the mosh pit at the old Coney Island High for much of November and December.

According to Caren Halbfinger of Indian Point Today…I mean the Journal News…Metro-North will institute speed restrictions in problem areas, going around 50 m.p.h. instead of 75-80. As Metro-North deputy chief of operations Dave Schanoes tells the paper, that means a 6-7 minute delay, as opposed to a 12 minute delay. (Metro-North would actually prefer a 5:59 minute delay, so it’s technically “on time.”)

The railroad is also testing a sand-shooting mechanism that propels a “microjet of sand between the wheel and the rail” to foster adhesion and prevent skidding.

Today marks my 100th day of riding Metro-North.

Some observations:

* I used to get really annoyed that it takes so damn long to get from 125th Street to Grand Central.

I still do.

* For reasons I can’t really explain, I’ve never slept on the train during these hundred days. Maybe tonight.

* I wish I lived closer to the city, but I’m dealing.

* I have early-onset O.Seat.D.

* Slippery Rail season is deplorable, and was a really bad way to start your commuting career.

* In all seriousness, amidst all my griping, the commuting experience isn’t that bad. Across 100 days, I’m yet to see a drunken asshole, a truly filthy car, or a hint of vomit. (Of course, I’ll probably get the hat trick tonight.) A train car is sort of a microcosm of the New York metropolitan area: There are a lot of us, and not a lot of space. It’s only going to work if you’re mindful of your neighbor every now and then.

Granted, there are the loud cell phone talkers and the clods who feel their bag deserves its own seat. But all told, people behave pretty well.

Five months down.

Thirty years until retirement.

I’ll be posting more throughout the day as I reflect on my first hundred days. Feel free to share your commuting observations too.