Amtrak Saves!

On Friday, I arrived at the station at the allotted time. Asked the station agent if the 5 o’clock to Penn was on time. He said yes. I go down to the platform and wait. Announcement: The 4 o’clock to Penn, which is running 45 minutes late, will be pulling up in 5 minutes. So I and every other person waiting for the 5 train thinks, “Ah. I’d have to wait another 15 minutes for the 5 train to come in. Why not get on the 4 train? ‘Twould be ridiculous to wait for ANOTHER New York train when a perfectly good one is here.” So we all get on the 4 train when it arrives. Twenty minutes later, the train begins to slow, and I think that we must be nearing Poughkeepsie. No. We break down on the tracks. A twenty-minute to an hour wait for a new engine, folks.
And here I had quashed that little voice in my head that told me to wait for the 5 train…. Here I wish for a garbage-powered DeLorian, but I don’t get one.
After 15 minutes (and after the 5 train has roared past us on the other track), our engine has cooled down and we begin to slouch toward Poughkeepsie. There, the Metro North dudes check the engine, while we stand around on the platform, wondering if we can just get on Metro North for free. They tell us that we will only be able to get on Metro North for free if our train is totally and utterly broken down; otherwise, shell out another $12. After 10 minutes, the conductors start coming out and screaming for everyone to get back on the train. “If we can make it to Croton-Harmon, we can make it to Penn!” one of them shouts triumphantly.
Ten minutes later, we drag ourselves into Beacon, and Amtrak dudes announce that the engine is kaput, jawohl, we should get our asses onto Metro North. Stepping onto a Metro North local train, the first thought is of women in babushkas and screaming infants. There’s a definite downgrade in atmosphere. The train seems to be air-conditioned, which would be very luxurious if it weren’t October. But Metro North is at least reliable. We sit in Beacon for 20 minutes, which is a long time considering that when an MN train makes a “stop,” it usually just sort of slows to 5 MPH and the conductors lean out of doors and hold their hands out for running passengers. “Just throw me the bags!” As we begin to move out of Beacon, the PA crackles, and the conductor says, “Sorry for the hold-up, folks. The Amtrak guys couldn’t get their act together and get all you folks on the train in time. This is a local train to New York Grand Central, making stops at…” and so on and so forth. Now I want to write a novel about rivalries between Amtrak and Metro North employees, but I already have a story about a rivalry between a cataloging librarian and a reference librarian. I don’t think I can do that kind of thing twice.
So I ended up getting into Grand Central at 8:30, two hours later than I was supposed to get into Penn. My friends are there waiting for me. They had killed time in a bar in the area, and R. was already Drunk.

The upshot of this whole experience is that, in the future, when I’m a big girl and have a car, I will drive to Poughkeepsie and take Metro North into Grand Central. It’s cheaper and less likely to screw you royally. In the meantime, I will make a t-shirt that says “Amtrak Saves” (in a satirical sense of course… I would never compare Amtrak to Jesus Christ) and wear it every time I picket outside of the station.

When I told A. of this idea, she said, “When you have a car, why don’t you just drive down to Brooklyn?” Clearly she thinks I’m a masochist.