Things Change

(Note that “Things Change” is my most common title for a post: this is the fifth time I’ve used it, as well as two longer titles that had it as a part.)

Yesterday, in Grand Central Terminal:

The use of electronic train signage is in itself a break with the past, and a welcome one, as the new boards carry more information than the old ones did. The screen on the left has the three lines that have been at the terminal since it was Grand Central Depot in 1871. The Hudson Line is commuter rail on what was the main line of the New York Central Railroad (the long distance service now goes to Penn Station); the Harlem Line is commuter rail on the first railroad in New York City, the New York and Harlem Railroad, which was a grand plan at a main-line railroad that failed as such because it ran through areas of farms and small towns; and the New Haven Line is commuter rail on what was the main line of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad (some of the long distance service moved to Penn Station as long ago as 1917, when the Hell Gate Bridge was completed and eventually all of it was moved).

So far, so good. It’s the middle screen that’s the news.¹ The various branches of the Long Island Railroad have been able to access Grand Central since early 2023 using not the original platforms but a new adjacent station, hence the track numbers in the 200s and 300s. Despite the relatively small amount of new track, the plan was quite complex and involved tunneling through bedrock immediately adjacent to Grand Central (and a bunch of extremely tall buildings) without disturbing anything.

The people who designed and built Grand Central and Penn Station were enormously talented and far-sighted, and we benefit from their skill today. But I think seeing that juxtaposition – Long Island trains leaving from Grand Central along with the Hudson, Harlem, and New Haven trains – would have managed to impress them.

1. For people from elsewhere: yes, there really is a town on Long Island called “Babylon.” ↩︎