half the fun of following baseball, I’d finally get something out of it, though I’ve never been much of a fan of football ‘stats’ either: I don’t care how many failed shots on goal we’ve had so I’m damn sure I wouldn’t care what percentage of home runs Babe Ruth scored. The simple truth is that, in the man’s own words, I don’t have ‘an affinity’ with baseball. And that’s that. Besides I’d get fat.
Time for bed. Tomorrow I’ve got a train to catch.
NEW YORK TO NIAGARA FALLS
TRAIN : Empire Service
FREQUENCY : up to 8 trains a day
DEPARTS NEW YORK, NEW YORK : 1:20 p.m. (Eastern Time)
via
Yonkers, NY
Croton-Harmon, NY
Poughkeepsie, NY
Rhinecliff-Kingston, NY
Hudson, NY
Albany-Rensselaer, NY
Schenectady, NY
Saratoga Springs, NY
Amsterdam, NY
Utica, NY
Rome, NY
Syracuse, NY
Rochester, NY
ARRIVE NIAGARA FALLS : 10:45 p.m. (Eastern Time)
DURATION : approx 9 hours, 35 minutes
DISTANCE : 460 miles
3
Grand Departures
HUNKERED DOWN in neoclassical splendour by the junction of Vanderbilt (named for Cornelius, king of the railroad tycoons) and 42nd Street (hub of theatreland), Grand Central Station with its great bronze eagle, clustered flags flying and great marble halls lit by myriad chandeliers, is the world’s most perfect departure point for a transcontinental railroad.
On the ‘dining concourse’ downstairs, the famous Oyster Bar and elegant cocktail lounges offer upmarket sustenance for the well-heeled voyager; to the east Grand Central Market is a food hall to put Harrods to shame with its cornucopia of fresh seafood – yellow-fin tuna, Maine lobster, heaps of shining fruit – glistening papaya, burnished Connecticut apples, piled high European cheeses and the most tantalising charcuterie that Little Italy can offer. In the main concourse all the stars of the constellations, painted in gold on a vaulted sky of purest pastel blue look down in benefaction on the passengers descending the cream marble steps. All in vain. Long distance trains don’t go from here.
They once did of course. When the current building, properly known as Grand Central Terminal opened on 2 February 1913 it was the focal point of a redevelopment of central Manhattan, creating some of the most expensive real estate on earth. The station itself, served by new electric trains, was intended to be a continental terminus to outclass anything in Europe, leaving Paris’s Gare de l’Est distinctly in the shade, never mind any of London’s relatively regional terminals. Even today only Kazan Station in Moscow, departure point for the Trans-Siberian, even remotely stands comparison.
As far as its owners, the New York Central Railroad, were concerned, its main domestic purpose was to outclass the terminal of their rivals the Pennsylvania Railroad, which only makes its eventual fate more ironic. When the station opened, its most famous train, the 20th Century Limited, was already famous worldwide for first class service and for 65 years, from 1902 until 1967,made the journey of just under 1,000 miles to Chicago in 16 hours. To emphasise the status of the train and its passengers a thick red carpet was routinely laid out to take them to the train, giving the world the phrase ‘red carpet treatment’.
In 1947 some 65 million people, the equivalent of 40 per cent of the population of the entire United States travelled through Grand Central Station. But if that was its proudest year, it was also the beginning of its long decline as America’s new love affair with the automobile and the airplane caused the railways gradually to be abandoned like a jilted bride. Only two years earlier Elizabeth Smart had written her semi-autobiographical, poetic novel entitled By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept . A sweeping, romantic, self-pitying yet magnificent tale of adultery and lost love it became immediately notorious. No one noted at the time that it might have been a metaphor
Time for bed. Tomorrow I’ve got a train to catch.
NEW YORK TO NIAGARA FALLS
TRAIN : Empire Service
FREQUENCY : up to 8 trains a day
DEPARTS NEW YORK, NEW YORK : 1:20 p.m. (Eastern Time)
via
Yonkers, NY
Croton-Harmon, NY
Poughkeepsie, NY
Rhinecliff-Kingston, NY
Hudson, NY
Albany-Rensselaer, NY
Schenectady, NY
Saratoga Springs, NY
Amsterdam, NY
Utica, NY
Rome, NY
Syracuse, NY
Rochester, NY
ARRIVE NIAGARA FALLS : 10:45 p.m. (Eastern Time)
DURATION : approx 9 hours, 35 minutes
DISTANCE : 460 miles
3
Grand Departures
HUNKERED DOWN in neoclassical splendour by the junction of Vanderbilt (named for Cornelius, king of the railroad tycoons) and 42nd Street (hub of theatreland), Grand Central Station with its great bronze eagle, clustered flags flying and great marble halls lit by myriad chandeliers, is the world’s most perfect departure point for a transcontinental railroad.
On the ‘dining concourse’ downstairs, the famous Oyster Bar and elegant cocktail lounges offer upmarket sustenance for the well-heeled voyager; to the east Grand Central Market is a food hall to put Harrods to shame with its cornucopia of fresh seafood – yellow-fin tuna, Maine lobster, heaps of shining fruit – glistening papaya, burnished Connecticut apples, piled high European cheeses and the most tantalising charcuterie that Little Italy can offer. In the main concourse all the stars of the constellations, painted in gold on a vaulted sky of purest pastel blue look down in benefaction on the passengers descending the cream marble steps. All in vain. Long distance trains don’t go from here.
They once did of course. When the current building, properly known as Grand Central Terminal opened on 2 February 1913 it was the focal point of a redevelopment of central Manhattan, creating some of the most expensive real estate on earth. The station itself, served by new electric trains, was intended to be a continental terminus to outclass anything in Europe, leaving Paris’s Gare de l’Est distinctly in the shade, never mind any of London’s relatively regional terminals. Even today only Kazan Station in Moscow, departure point for the Trans-Siberian, even remotely stands comparison.
As far as its owners, the New York Central Railroad, were concerned, its main domestic purpose was to outclass the terminal of their rivals the Pennsylvania Railroad, which only makes its eventual fate more ironic. When the station opened, its most famous train, the 20th Century Limited, was already famous worldwide for first class service and for 65 years, from 1902 until 1967,made the journey of just under 1,000 miles to Chicago in 16 hours. To emphasise the status of the train and its passengers a thick red carpet was routinely laid out to take them to the train, giving the world the phrase ‘red carpet treatment’.
In 1947 some 65 million people, the equivalent of 40 per cent of the population of the entire United States travelled through Grand Central Station. But if that was its proudest year, it was also the beginning of its long decline as America’s new love affair with the automobile and the airplane caused the railways gradually to be abandoned like a jilted bride. Only two years earlier Elizabeth Smart had written her semi-autobiographical, poetic novel entitled By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept . A sweeping, romantic, self-pitying yet magnificent tale of adultery and lost love it became immediately notorious. No one noted at the time that it might have been a metaphor
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