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BLOND37

BLOND37

OBS Chief
Joined
Nov 29, 2008
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568
(how many cities/states have a penn station.. interesting.. anyway)

i love sitting in NYP, listening to the announcements, watching travelers come to and fro, talking to other people..if only i could get paid for that.. oh but i also love riding the rails.. sigh..

it'd ve really cool if they did the announcements in several languages..
 
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How could I?
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I'll be there on NTD during a 3X point run!
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I believe Pittsburgh's Amtrak station is (or was once) known as Pennsylvania Station as well.
 
New York Penn is awful, too small, hot during summer, and can be overcrowded. They really need to get that Monihan project going.
 
Shawn Ryu said:
New York Penn is awful, too small, hot during summer, and can be overcrowded. They really need to get that Monihan project going.
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OMG yes.. one day i decided to go first class.. made the decision days before i traveled.. OMG i'm s glad i did.. the weather travel was horrid! Downpours, humid.. thankfully i had my FC ticket and could wait in Club Acela.. ahhhh.. :)
 
BLOND37 said:
Shawn Ryu said:
New York Penn is awful, too small, hot during summer, and can be overcrowded. They really need to get that Monihan project going.
Click to expand...

OMG yes.. one day i decided to go first class.. made the decision days before i traveled.. OMG i'm s glad i did.. the weather travel was horrid! Downpours, humid.. thankfully i had my FC ticket and could wait in Club Acela.. ahhhh.. :)
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Aloha

While the beautiful building is replaced by the current Madison Square Garden. The Station Area is the same. As best I can remember the floor space of the Monihan Building is less than the floor area of NYP.
 
Shawn Ryu said:
New York Penn is awful, too small, hot during summer, and can be overcrowded. They really need to get that Monihan project going.
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Yeah why not? We should of course be pissing away scarce transportation money on building edifices and malls instead of doing anything about true capacity enhancement :)

GG-1 said:
Aloha

While the beautiful building is replaced by the current Madison Square Garden. The Station Area is the same. As best I can remember the floor space of the Monihan Building is less than the floor area of NYP.
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That is more or less true.

BTW, "Monihan" is actually Moynihan as in Daniel Patrick Moynihan who was the Senator from New York (1976) for many years and before that was the US Ambassador to India and also the US Permanent Representative at the United Nations.
 
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jis said:
Shawn Ryu said:
New York Penn is awful, too small, hot during summer, and can be overcrowded. They really need to get that Monihan project going.
Click to expand...
Yeah why not? We should of course be pissing away scarce transportation money on building edifices and malls instead of doing anything about true capacity enhancement :)
Click to expand...
Yeah. NYP is kinda ugly but I think the Amtrak area is sufficient enough to service Amtrak's needs. It's the commuter traffic that clogs things up when they're running around to catch trains. But it's a pretty large station.
 
nferr said:
jis said:
Shawn Ryu said:
New York Penn is awful, too small, hot during summer, and can be overcrowded. They really need to get that Monihan project going.
Click to expand...
Yeah why not? We should of course be pissing away scarce transportation money on building edifices and malls instead of doing anything about true capacity enhancement :)
Click to expand...
Yeah. NYP is kinda ugly but I think the Amtrak area is sufficient enough to service Amtrak's needs. It's the commuter traffic that clogs things up when they're running around to catch trains. But it's a pretty large station.
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While nowhere as near as busy as NYP, I have to say I enjoy hanging out at LAUPT. With Metrolink commuter trains, the subway, the light rail, and the frequent Pacific Surfliner service, it is now a busy and bustling place much of the time. I remember in the 1970s, the pidgeons frequently outnumbered the people in the waiting room, and it was kind of a sad place. Seeing it full of people using it at as a rail terminal is a real pleasure.
 
jis said:
Shawn Ryu said:
New York Penn is awful, too small, hot during summer, and can be overcrowded. They really need to get that Monihan project going.
Click to expand...
Yeah why not? We should of course be pissing away scarce transportation money on building edifices and malls instead of doing anything about true capacity enhancement :)
Click to expand...
Yea like that will ever happen. NEw York needs a bigger, more sophisticated train station considering the fact that its the busiest train stop.
 
Philadelphia has:

Pennsylvania Station--30th Street (original full name)

Penn Center Suburban Station (full name)

Of course, neither of these are referred to as such, as there are tens of former PRR stations within a 20-mile radius, and at one point, it would have been as confusing as saying that you want a train to "SEPTA Station"
 
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Guest said:
NYP announcer:

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Sheila does a great job, and is a real pro, but for shear entertainment, I miss the wonderful announcements that the great Danny Simmons delivered. He was on television many times, and after his announcement for a big train like The Broadway or the Crescent, he would receive a round of applause from his appreciative audience. :)
 
My favorite announcer was an ordinary man named "Joe" at Grand Central Station. In the '50's they would have a teletype similar to the ticker tapes you see in the WW II parades letting Joe know an inbound LD was past 138th Street(probably Mott Haven tower). Joe would then, in the most beautiful cursive handwriting I've ever seen, update each train on a huge blackboard located at the upper track (#40 or so)end of the upper level. Then he would get on a full station PA and announce, in true RR form, the train name, arrival track and ETA. The waiting area is still there but no Joe, blackboard or ticker...
 
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had8ley said:
My favorite announcer was an ordinary man named "Joe" at Grand Central Station. In the '50's they would have a teletype similar to the ticker tapes you see in the WW II parades letting Joe know an inbound LD was past 138th Street(probably Mott Haven tower). Joe would then, in the most beautiful cursive handwriting I've ever seen, update each train on a huge blackboard located at the upper track (#40 or so)end of the upper level. Then he would get on a full station PA and announce, in true RR form, the train name, arrival track and ETA. The waiting area is still there but no Joe, blackboard or ticker...
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Have you been to GCT recently? You may be pleasantly surprised to see in the 'Vanderbilt Room', I believe it's called, a blackboard as you described with a lot of long forgotten name trains listed along with their time status, preserved behind a transparent panel.
 
had8ley said:
In the '50's they would have a teletype similar to the ticker tapes you see in the WW II parades letting Joe know an inbound LD was past 138th Street(probably Mott Haven tower).
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MO, as Mott Haven tower was known, is actually up around 150th Street in the Bronx and sadly no longer in use. Although there were interlockings controlled by MO as far south as 135th Street I believe. So it could still well have been MO that was tipping off Joe as to a train's location.

MO is the building in the center with the angled center that permitted bay windows so that the controllers could see more of the area under control.
 
AlanB said:
had8ley said:
In the '50's they would have a teletype similar to the ticker tapes you see in the WW II parades letting Joe know an inbound LD was past 138th Street(probably Mott Haven tower).
Click to expand...
MO, as Mott Haven tower was known, is actually up around 150th Street in the Bronx and sadly no longer in use. Although there were interlockings controlled by MO as far south as 135th Street I believe. So it could still well have been MO that was tipping off Joe as to a train's location.

MO is the building in the center with the angled center that permitted bay windows so that the controllers could see more of the area under control.
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In Penn Station, the device the Train Director at 'A' Tower used to communicate with the Train Announcer was called a "Telautograph", or something like that. It had a spool of narrow printer paper, and a pen mounted on a pantograph device. When the train was lined onto its station track, about 3 minutes out, the director would write out the train number, underline it, and then the track number. It took a bit of practice to master. If you didn't lift the transmitting pen enough between characters, it would result in illegible gibberish on the receiving device that would duplicate the motion of the transmitter. When the announcer got the info, he would radio the track number to redcaps and ushers before publicly posting it on the Solari boards.

There was at one time an arrivals board on the lower level, where someone would chalk in the arrivals of longhaul trains. Even if it wasn't staffed, those in the know could peer into the booth and get a heads-up on track numbers by reading the telautograph also located there.
 
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The once magnificent Pittsburgh station has been reduced to a small waiting room area. The station building is all still there but it is now an apartment house and the once grand waiting area is now the lobby. The strange thing is that the tracks still run right next to it. What a shame!
 
dlagrua said:
The once magnificent Pittsburgh station has been reduced to a small waiting room area. The station building is all still there but it is now an apartment house and the once grand waiting area is now the lobby. The strange thing is that the tracks still run right next to it. What a shame!
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Must be a railfans dream to reside there! Wonder what the rent is?
 
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