I figure I’m about due for a good freakish train experience.

Seriously, it’s been some time since I’ve had a good eyewitness incident to blog about: a rider-conductor tiff, a rider-rider spat, snakes on a train, whatever it might be.

So sorry for the lame posts of late. I mean, yesterday morning, I overheard two ladies in their 50s–they were on board when I got on in Hawthorne and they looked like daytrippers–discussing an intervention one of them hosted for a troubled family member. Of course, when I heard that, the iPod was turned off, and then the nearest ear stripped of earbud. But I only caught the tail end of the tale–the intervention ended up working out OK, which isn’t a lot of fun. The daughter seems healed.

Two days ago, I saw the Buffalo Wing Man–the only person to get an Open Letter To: from TJ more than once. He spreads his awful Buffalo Wing dinner all over a four seater, dipping those wings in the dip, and–the worst part of it–leaving the whole greasy, bony mess for the help to clean up. Then he gets off in Hawthorne and yaps on his cell about his fantasy baseball squad.  Two days ago, it was peanut butter slathered all over a bagel, and a bright yellow Zaro’s bag full of refuse left behind. Jerk.

Then, last night, I broke from my very typical 5:27 or 5:46 routine to take the 7:22 after a few going-away drinks with a co-worker–now an ex-coworker. (Unlike the other half dozen going-away drinks things I’ve attended with a co-worker the past 12 months, this guy actually left on his own, for another job. Maybe it’s a sign.)

Man, was that 7:22 extraordinarily packed. You couldn’t even really get one of the good standing spots in the vestibules, which comfortably stand four. It reminded me of the dark days of commuting, before Metro-North figured out how to corral the Slippery Rail scourge.

I stood back by the conductor booth and 1 3/4-seater area, and had enough room to flip open the new Greater New York section of the Journal. Some tool got on at 125th, cellphone a-blazing. (Here’s a Word of the Week I could use some help with–people who enter the train yapping loudly on their phones.) The guy stood right across from me in the narrow passageway, meaning I could read the paper about six inches from my face. I gave him the look and he smartly moved back up against the door between cars.

So, if you’re still reading, for some reason, TJ obviously has not had much to blog about this week. I’m aiming for the 5:27, so if you plan on acting nutty on the train tonight, please be on that train.

Outer-borough folks are learning what Metro-North riders have long known: Fallen leaves can severely foul up your commute.

The MTA has posted signs on subway lines that go outside, reports the New York Times, warning riders to expect leaf-fueled delays.

Subway riders who thought they had come across every reason for train delays — station fires, flooded tracks and sick passengers — have been presented with a new one: falling leaves.

Transit officials have put up about 500 signs along three subway lines in recent weeks warning that fallen foliage, “crushed by moving trains,” has been leaving a “slippery residue” that “may affect the train’s ability to start and stop.” Riders of the B and Q lines, which have several open-air stops in Brooklyn, and the Franklin Avenue shuttle in Brooklyn, which is completely exposed, were told to “allow for additional travel time.”

New Yorkers are not taking the news well.

“Because of leaves?” one rider, Sylis Gordon, asked incredulously on Wednesday as she waited for the Q train at the Parkside Avenue station. “That’s new.” She looked around her, noticing garbage on the tracks, but said, “There aren’t that many leaves.”

The kid bike was on the rack at Hawthorne again this morning.

It’s a tiny little dirt bike, with a lock so flimsy that I was surprised did not pop open in this morning’s sharp winds.

It looks like it’s suited for a kid that’s about 8 or 9.

In fact, the rack had all of five cycles on it once I pulled up. So for the second time this week, I did not get to chain my ride to one of the four nice U- (or upside down U, depending on your perspective) shaped bars in the middle of the rack (those are Park Place and Boardwalk), and instead had to chain myself to one of the outside bars and lean my bike against the side of the rack (that would be Baltic or Mediterranean Ave.).

But back to the kid bike. What’s the kid doing chaining his bike to the rack on the school day? Where is he going? Frankly, as Swiss nanny author Joyce Egginton points out, Mount Pleasant ain’t much of a draw for young people. Is he hopping the train to Gotham? Despite the considerable progress from Mount Pleasant Today, I wouldn’t exactly encourage kids to ride their bikes around Hawthorne.

Is the kid bike related to what looks like the dad bike–a beat-up mountain bike that showed up the same day the wee dirt bike did? Do kid and dad venture off together on dusty adventures, like the grim father-son combos on Cormac McCarthy novels? 

Maybe it’s not a kid riding the tiny bike at all. Maybe it’s a munchkin, a Smurf, a garden gnome. Hey, times are tough–maybe those guys have to commute to the city too.

I’ll get to the bottom of this soon.

By the way, our train featured six cars instead of the usual eight, so it was jammed, with people occupying the middle seat (”sittin’ bitch”, as the bikers say). The conductor acknowledged the shortfall but not the reason why. 

The short train reminded me of the dark days of 2006, when I was a commuting novice and Metro-North was very much at the mercy of the dreaded late fall Slippery Rail season.

Kudos to Metro-North for getting through this past fall without being victimized by the pesky leaf residue that used to knock cars out of commission.  

With the big Nor’easter coming our way, SLIPPERY RAIL CONDITIONS are likely to hit New Jersey as soon as tomorrow.  I missed my usual NY train, and had to sprint to catch the 7:43 train to Hoboken., where I found a NJ Transit pamphlet about slippery rail.

The Transit Advisory warns of a “challenging season” for this “age-old problem” in the pamphlet. Decaying materials on the rail become “PECTIN, an oily residue that can make it difficult for trains to gain or maintain traction.”

One of the tricks and treats up NJT’s sleeve for slippery rail conditins, other than spreading sand on the rails prior to peak periods, is “deploying AQUA TRACK”–NJT’s high-pressure rail washing system. Our awesome pamphlet reports “Since AQUA TRACK SYSTEM has been deployed over the past six years, slippery rail delays have been reduced by about 50 percent.”

No delays this morning, except my own of course. But as the fall season lives up to it’s name, we can at least hope to draw some enjoyment on the autumn scenery, as Bob Dylan pictures it…

Train wheels runnin’ through the back of my memory,
When I ran on the hilltop following a pack of wild geese.
Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody
When I paint my masterpiece.

- jerseyjim

[image: sparrowfarm.com]

Halloween.

The season of ghosts, goblins, children dressed as CC Sabathia, and other scary things.

It’s also the season of the dreaded slippery rail–the oily leaf residue that sticks on train tracks in the northeast and causes all sorts of havoc on trains.

I first encountered its tyranny shortly after moving to the burbs exactly three months ago. Eight car lines were reduced to 6…5…4!! as cars skidded through the oil, flattened their wheels and were taken out of service.

It was awful.

Last year, Metro-North finally got the upper hand, as an initiative dubbed “Water world” sprayed water and sand onto the tracks just before the wheels rolled over them. It was actually a very successful program, and commuters barely even noticed it was fall last year.

Well, Wednesday’s mad winds brought down lots of leaves prematurely, just as another gossamer object floated from the sky–the new issue of Mileposts.

“We’ve reprogrammed the software of our M7 fleet to allow the braking sytem to adjust to slip-slide conditions. And we have instructed our engineers to report slippery conditions immediately to our Operations Control Center. We have also trained them how to operate through these “slippery” areas.”

The railroad is also reducing trains’ speed as they go through the extremely leafy areas, to minimize skid. We seemed to be doing this yesterday morning, just about crawling through the ‘dales, Eastchester and the North Bronx.

“We can reduce the incidents of slippery rail, but we cannot eliminate them,” said Mileposts, while urging patience.

Speaking of patience, those poor fools on the New Haven Line were rewarded for theirs by finishing second (as in, not last) in the August On-Time Performance race, its 97.5% total nearly a point ahead of the Hudson’s 96.7%.

This is like Teddy Roosevelt winning the foam mascot race at Washington Nationals games. Or, for that matter, the Nationals winning at Nationals games.

[image: letteddywin.com]

Little G thoroughly enjoyed the first 40 minutes of holiday clay-mation classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer last night, and was particularly intrigued by the Island of Misfit Toys. He couldn’t comprehend why a child would refuse an elephant with spots, a train with square wheels, and, most perplexing, a race car with no discernible handicap.

He repeatedly asked what was wrong with that blue race car on the lonely island, and we had no good explanation for him. Maybe the engine broke, we said. Maybe it has a flat tire. Maybe the steering wheel is busted.

But Little G saw that race car cruising across a patch of ice, and none of the explanations held up.

But back to that train with square wheels. It got me thinking about Metro-North, and the dreaded slippery rail season that hits around this time of year, during which trains skid on wet leaves, lock up their wheels, and retire to the fix-it yard to have their wheels made round again.

A train with flat wheels. You get the connection.

My first year of commuting, the fall of 2006, this was an absolute nightmare–an eight-car fleet reduced to 6, to 5, then to 4, and perfectly respectable people folded into inhuman corners of the train.

Last year, the railroad took considerable measures, project name “Water World,” to combat slippery rail. These involved shooting a stream of water ahead of the train to clear out the mucky leaves, and reprogramming the cars to not skid when they hit the leaves. It worked really well.

And I think it’s worked really well again this year. The leaves are down, and I haven’t seen a single incident reeking of slippery rail. As the great Yukon Cornelius might say, “mmm…nothin!”

[image: missfittoys.net]

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.”