Train blogger/photog Emily of IRideTheHarlemLine has revisited the tiny Mount Pleasant train station, which only receives/accepts passengers a few times a weekend as they visit/depart Gate of Heaven cemetery. (GoH is of course the final resting place of Babe Ruth and, about 50 feet away from Ruth, Billy Martin. George Steinbrenner is buried 1,200 miles away in Tampa.)

Emily takes terrific photos, and takes considerable delight in visiting Metro-North train stations and snapping the s*** out of them.

This is her second visit to Mount Pleasant; previously, she called it “The loneliest statin on the Harlem Line.” Oddly, it’s probably closer to my home than the Hawthorne station, though getting my bike up the hill through Gate of Heaven would make Broad Street’s Heartbreak Hill seem like a bunny slope.

She writes:

One of the first station panoramas I posted was from Mount Pleasant… though I wasn’t too happy with it, so I went back to the station, and got a few new panoramas. Enjoy! 

Remind me to speak with Emily about helping with some sort of long-overdue redesign of Trainjotting.

The civic group Mount Pleasant Today has tallied up its commuter questionnaires regarding what to do with the now in-play Hawthorne train station, and will present its findings to the town board, including Supervisor Joan Maybury, at town hall at 8:30 p.m. August 10.

Writes MPT:

We would like to thank you for participating in the Hawthorne Train Station Survey. We are very pleased with the overwhelming responses we received.

Mount Pleasant Today will be presenting the Hawthorne Train Station Survey Results to the Town Supervisor, Town Board and the community at the Public Session of the Town Board meeting on Tuesday, August 10th at 8:30pm. 
 
We invite you to attend.

The decision on what to do with the vacant space at the train station is ultimately up to the board, but Maybury has said the questionnaire results will figure into the decision.

Maybury has made cleaning up the Hawthorne station a cornerstone of her tenure; recent improvements include a giant ornamental clock, and a pair of new stone planters filled with flora and fauna.

It appears the clock was officially unveiled last Thursday. When I got to the station in the evening, several parking spots were blocked off, and crews were setting up a PA system.

I was making my way to Grand Central yesterday evening, doing a little Pershing Square dancing with the usual two minutes to get from 42nd Street to my train.

There was a massive crowd in front of Grand Central; clearly, a film shoot was going on. It takes a lot to get more than a few dozen New Yorkers to stop and actually watch a shoot–remember, we had live Law & Order whenever we wanted it for the last 37 years–and this shoot was succeeding in that regard, easily a few hundred people watching the proceedings.

At the heart of the shoot was a man with wild, dark hair and a rakish top hat. The Missus had PPV’d Tim Burton’s trippy “Alice in Wonderland” the night before, so I immediately thought of Johnny Depp as I crossed 42nd.

Nope, wasn’t him. As I got closer, I saw it was actually Russell Brand hamming it up for the crowd. He’s starring in a remake of Arthur.

Who would’ve thought Brand, a.k.a. Mr. Katy Perry, was so recognizable to the chubby, moneyed white GCT demo?

I don’t know that this has ever happened to me in my seven years of using a MetroCard.

I made my way to the turnstile under Grand Central this morning, en route to the 6.

I saw the massive lines for new monthly tickets, and patted myself on the back for having had the forethought to bring my August ticket this morning.

Alas, the turnstile turned out to be a spurnstile.

“Already Expired,” read the digital reader after I ran my card through the turnstile.

Expired?

I have four MetroCards in my wallet right now, six if you include the ones offering their services on the flipside of my July and August train passes. All four have some degree of value on them–40 cents or a buck or a buck-fifty, or some amount that’s not quite enough to get on the subway with.

This happens when I need to put more money on the card, but am faced with a machine that issues only new MetroCards. I have another five or six cards at home, also with some change on them. I may make a Christmas ornament out of them someday.

A crowd assembling behind me at the turnstile, I flipped the card over. “Expires -7/31/10,” it said. Expired indeed, and took my four or five dollars or whatever I had on the card with it.

Happy freakin’ Monday, I thought as I headed for the escalator and Grand Central exit.

At least walking is still free.

UPDATE: Thanks to the sound advice from readers Benjamin and Ellie, I presented my expired card to the token clerk at 28th and Park, and was given a fresh new card with the existing $4.50 on it about four seconds later.

It was, quite simply, the least amount of time I’ve ever given myself to catch a train.

And I’ve pushed the limits quite a bit.

I had my eye on the 5:46. I’d like to say I had something absolutely crucial to do in Westchester at 6:30–put out a ticking bomb planted by the Russkies (Jack Bauer was, in fact, having a nap), or go over final wedding plans with Bill and Hill up in Clintonville.

In fact, I just wanted to get home to play with the kiddies and give The Missus a breather.

I’d had a 5:15 phone meeting scheduled and figured it wouldn’t go beyond 5:30, which is when I try to leave for the 5:46.

5:15, no call. 5:20, nothing.

Finally, the guy calls at 5:25. Maybe I can make it really short, I thought.

We did our business while I eyed the clock. It was 5:32 when we were winding down. I shut down my computer and loaded my backpack. We made small talk about Mad Men, and I thought of Don Draper rushing to catch the express to Ossining.

I huge up at 5:34; could I actually exit work and sprint to Grand Central, and track 108, in the next 12 minutes?

I hit the elevators, then the street at 28th. It was 5:37. No, I couldn’t sprint it, not even in my lean, mean prime. My only hope was the 6 train.

Just as I entered the station at 28th, I saw just what I hoped to see: a subway at the platform. I ran my card through and bolted for it–then watched the doors shut and the train take off just as I got there.

I’d be on the 6:10, I conceded. Mission failed. Russkies win. Again.

The new-ish electronic scoreboard in the station said the next train would arrive in three minutes. I clung to a distant hope.

Indeed, there it was, three minutes later. The on-train clock said 5:41. Could I go two stops, then bust through the rush-hour crush in Grand Central to make the 5:46?

I was sure as hell going to try.

We made it to 33rd in a flash, while the run to 42nd snaked slowly through the dark tunnel. I moved closer to the door for pole position and stretched my legs for the sprint.

I looked at my new Timex Iron Man: 5:44:20 as the doors opened. I had less than two minutes to navigate the GCT obstacle course.

I bolted out of the train, pushed through the human morass at the stairs, climbed the steps, bumped off an old man as I headed through the turnstiles, and headed up the stairs to Grand Central.

5:45.

I prayed for the typical 40-seconds late Metro-North train as I galloped down the GCT corridor to the concourse. Then it was down the way-too-narrow escalator  to track 108 (Going up the stairs, only to go down the escalator. Must it be that way?)

I committed the faux pas of actually passing people on the one-person-width escalator, earning me a few stink-eyes. Still, I soldiered on.

It was a straight sprint across the basement level to 108, cutting through a Hudson News to shave off a few seconds (”Crossing the Hudson,” in commuter parlance.). I hit the ramp at 5:45:40 and the lights of my train were flashing. The conductor’s head was out of the window like a Whack-A-Mole. He spied me and offered a faint mask of disgust.

I stepped onto the train just as the doors shut.

A new NYC commuter record. My fellow riders toasted me with a gold medal, a crown made of an olive branch, and a seat on the aisle.

Hawthorne station was like Santa’s workshop on Christmas Eve this morning, but instead of elves putting the finishing touches on the children of the world’s trains, drums and dollies, the workers were working to beautify the station.

I counted something like 10 different Mount Pleasant work trucks: pickups, earth movers, etc. Guys were planting flowers in the new stone-wall beds at the northernmost tip of the station, doing the same around the still-covered grandfather clock, and even replacing the busted railroad ties marking parking spots parallel to the tracks.

Town Supervisor Maybury said she would beautify the train area. She wasn’t kidding.

We here at Trainjotting have been harping on this for years: the railroad’s “on-time performance” is a very misleading figure.

Metro-North touts an “on-time” percentage in its monthly Mileposts mouthpiece that’s about as high as the temps this past weekend–the Harlem line is “on-time” 98.7% of the time so far this year, and the Hudson is 98.3%.

Of course, “on-time” means any train arriving within six minutes of when it’s supposed to.

The New York Times pushed the MTA to release its full on-time records, and found the trains were much later than the railroads reported in 2009. Rush-hour trains may be late as much as 25% of the time.

The good news is, and you probably already know this, Metro-North is best of the local bunch. New Jersey Transit is the worst, and the LIRR is somewhere in the middle.

At the peak of the rush, from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m., about 25 percent of New Jersey Transit trains entering Manhattan arrived late; about 2 in 5 of the late trains were tardy by at least 15 minutes.

Things are better for Metro-North riders–at least those who don’t live along the Sound shore.

Metro-North’s lines to Connecticut and Westchester, which have the best performance in the region, benefit from having spacious Grand Central Terminal to themselves. Still, trains on the New Haven line perform worse than the others, primarily because the cars are holdovers from the 1970s and some of the track uses overhead electrical wires that are nearly a century old and prone to damage.

The various railroads’ on-time percentages look sweet because the non-rush hour trains are mostly on time, boosting the overall percentages. The rush-hour trains–the ones that affect most of us–are a much different story, as crowded tracks, tunnels and platforms make for significant delays.

Give it up for the Times, they did their homework on this one.

These are among the findings of an examination by The New York Times of the more than 685,000 trips in 2009 involving the region’s three major commuter railroads, using records requested by The Times that had not previously been made available to the public.

The review found that the official figures for on-time performance, often used as a promotional tool, contrasted sharply with the experience of tens of thousands of passengers who regularly ride the trains at peak hours. In fact, the most important trips for daily commuters, those that can make or break breakfast with a client or dinner with a spouse, experience far more delays than the statistics may let on.

Trips to and from Penn Station during rush hours, for instance, were two and a half times as likely to be late as trips taken at any other time. The disappointment among riders can be further appreciated by considering the record of specific commuter lines. For example, morning commuters on New Jersey Transit who passed through the Summit station were late on 1 of every 6 trips, nearly a third by more than 20 minutes. And Long Island Rail Road commuters who traveled from Huntington to Manhattan at rush hour arrived late on 1 of every 10 trips, twice the average for the railroad.

The ripped up wood floors from the renovated Mamaroneck train station were simply scrap to the builders, but someone else saw serious value in them.

Polly Kreisman’s Westchester news site TheLoopNY.com tells the story of a local man carting the more-than-a-century-old wood away from Mamaroneck station, and turning it into something useful.

Former Yankee catcher/coach/manager Ralph Houk passed away yesterday at 90. A fateful train ride involving Houk forever changed the face of the modern sports page.

From September 2008:

There once was a time when sportswriter and athlete sat shoulder to shoulder on trains and in bars. The athlete spoke his mind, and the sportswriter sent the jock talk through a pretty stringent filter, hiding the athlete’s rougher edges–usually pertaining to booze, broads or both–from the reader.

That all changed 50 years ago on a Yankee train trip from Kansas City to Detroit, reports the NY Times. A donnybrook broke out on board between the Bombers’ hard-throwing, hard-drinking hurler, Ryne Duren, and coach Ralph Houk. Houk threw a jab and his World Series ring (remember those, Yankee fans?) ripped the skin above Duren’s eye.

As was protocol back then, even for the New York Post, beat writer Leonard Schecter turned a blind eye to the row. But Schecter was hammered by his editor at the Post when a Journal-American reporter came up with a scoop saying the Yankees were hiring private eyes to monitor players; how did you miss that, the editor asked. Schecter, under pressure, offered up the Houk-Duren bout to get the editor off his back and save his job.

The page one story read:

“Yankee relief star Ryne Duren and Coach Ralph Houk engaged in a bloody and bitter fight during the ball club’s pennant victory party Sunday, it was learned today.

“Houk won the fistfight, and Duren today wears its scars, including a gash over his right eye. The Yankee ball club is extremely agitated, and has put a platoon of private detectives to watching the players since.

The rapport between jock and scribe was permanently altered on that train, never to return to its old form. Think of Leonard Schecter every time you hear Jeter mutter a mindless nothing about “taking one day at a time.”

I hit the garage yesterday morning to climb on my bike, cutting it close, as usual, for the 8:16.

I’d dodged a pair of bullets the day before–the giant storm that struck seconds after I arrived at Hawthorne station in the morning, and the rains that arrived when I rode home that evening.

I’d thrown a plastic bag over my bike seat to keep it dry Monday, which altered my morning routine just enough yesterday morning–taking the bag off the seat, folding it, throwing it in my backpack–to throw me out of whack.

I hopped on the bike and headed down the driveway, then the street. The TJs have this little tradition where the entire family–Little G, Little Miss C, The Missus–lines up in the bay window to wave to me (no, they don’t sing “So Long, Farewell, Auf Weidesen,” etc.).

According to The Missus, Little Miss C, who is 2, noticed it first.

“Hat!” she yelled. She is of few words.

“Is Daddy going to be OK?” added Little G.

Indeed, Daddy had forgotten his helmet. I’d sparred with Little G for weeks over the importance of helmet wearing, and here I was, rolling off into the sunset al fresco. Nice example, Dad.

I contemplated heading back to the garage, but decided I didn’t have time and set out commando style. What’s more dangerous, I wondered–riding slowly and safely with no helmet, or flying down Heartbreak Hill on Broad with no helmet because my train leaves in three minutes.

I passed neighbor Tea Party Steve as he watered his lawn.

“Yeh forgot yer helmet!” he yelled.

I made a lame quip about forgetting my head too, and kept on my way.

I’d ridden bikes without a helmet almost every day from age 5 to 16 or so; why was I so worried now? Probably because kids’ heads are padded with styrofoam packaging material, and adults’ noggins are not.

In fact, I liked the way it felt without a helmet, like going for a ride in your friend’s convertible on that first warm day of spring.

I liked arriving in the city free from the clutches of dreaded helmet-head, and I think the 82 rail-thin models who winked at me suggestively between 42nd Street and 28th appreciated my carefully coiffed pate too.

I thought for a moment about retiring the brain-bucket full-time, but figured I was lucky to get home in one piece without it yesterday.