Back in December I had planned on being at the train station and handing out cards on the 24th, for all the other unfortunate people that had to work on Christmas Eve. I thought it might be interesting to just go up to random people and give them cards. Maybe it would make them smile. Unfortunately, I ended up being sick on that day, and I never went to work. So much for that plan…

But the whole idea of giving out cards stuck in my mind. And so I decided I was going to do it. For spring. Recently I read something about the Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy, which ended up influencing my final idea. One of the people involved in that group handed out dollars, but only if the person that got the dollar agreed that they would give it to yet another person. I wondered if I could do this in some way with cards. I give out cards, and I get other people to give out cards.

That was pretty much the thought process on how Project Sunshine came into existence. I decided I would give out a bunch of cards to people I see on the train, at the station, maybe even conductors, or the lady with the funky accent that sells tickets at the train station (if you’re reading this, I really like your accent!). Inside each card I give out, I would include yet another card in an envelope, with instructions for that person to find another person to give that card to. And in that card, there is yet another envelope, with a card for that person to give out. I’ve been calling the different cards first, second, and third generation cards, based on the amount of handling each card has gotten. The third generation cards are the last in the chain.

Roughly this is how it works. I give out a card to one person, but if it all works out, three people total end up getting cards.

So what do these cards look like? All of them have the same image, although based on whether the person ends up getting a first, second, or third generation card, the size is different. This is the image that is on each card…

I’m going to start passing these out on the trains today, the 16th of March, a few days before spring officially starts. The weather is supposed to be great and spring-like, so I figured it was about time. I will continue on the 17th, and on the afternoon of the 18th I will be in Grand Central also passing out cards. We’ll see how many I have left over and will go from there. I don’t really have the funds to be mass producing cards, but I’ve done what I can by scrounging up some old envelopes and recycling them (so if you have an envelope with a big white sticker on the front, that is why. Recycled!). I have a total of 60 first generation cards (total of 180 cards… I never want to stuff an envelope again!).

Each card will have the web address of “Project Sunshine” on the back, and I am hoping that people that receive the cards will be able to get online and make some comments. I am especially eager to see if there are any people that do actually get a third generation card. Honestly I am not quite sure how this is going to work, if people I give the cards to will actually give the card inside out to another person. But we shall see.

There is this sentiment in the news today, with the internet and all “competing” with the “real” news. That sentiment is “who cares about the facts, as long as I report it first”. And this sentiment sickens me. Seriously.

I have been having issues with my laptop charger, so I haven’t been on my computer quite as much this week. So I totally missed the other day’s story about the person getting killed by the 6 train at 77th Street. Maybe it was good I missed it. Maybe because the story was complete and utter bullshit. Check out the story on The New York Times‘ website, and read the comments. You will see something drastically different than what the story reports. Why? Because the story was changed as the “real” information came in.

Apparently the original story reported that a young girl was struck by the train. Not only that, witnesses report that the girl was possibly pushed off the platform, as students were horsing around. That is pretty fucked up. A person getting pushed? That is murder on the subway! But hey, guess what, that story was completely false. It is now reported that the person that was struck was not a child, but a forty-eight-year-old woman named Rose M. Mankos. And not only was she NOT pushed, the story now reports that she dropped her bag on the tracks, and JUMPED DOWN TO RETRIEVE IT. That on the other hand is NOT murder. That is complete and utter stupidity. I am so sorry, but that woman got what she deserved. You may call me heartless, but if you jump down on the tracks, you are an idiot.

People, never, never, NEVER go down on those damn tracks. Just don’t do it. Losing something on the tracks does happen. New York City Transit estimates that it happens perhaps twelve to fifteen times per day. If you do lose an item, you need to report it to a police officer or employee. There is an Emergency Response and Track Lubrication Division, and they respond to these events. Once the call is made, a track specialist responds and will retrieve the item. It may not happen instantaneously, and you may have to return later to pick up the item, but at least you will be safe. Life is worth more than whatever stupid possessions you may have dropped. You can buy a new iPod. But your poor family members (whom I am truly sorry for… having to identify that mangled mess of your daughter / sister in the morgue) can’t buy another you.

Note: This post has been edited, because I am a moron and wrote that this happened Friday, when in reality it occurred on Thursday. Talk about criticizing the “media,” hah! It has also been updated to reflect the response I got from NYCTSubwayScoop on Twitter regarding the procedure for retrieving a lost item.

The New York Post this morning reports that wi-fi may be coming to Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road. The MTA is looking for developers to submit plans detailing how the service would be implemented and maintained. The plans include wi-fi in Grand Central Terminal, as well as Penn Station. The service must include a 24-hour help desk for commuters, and the service can’t be spotty at any part during the trip. Each company that submits a plan will detail whether the service will be free, or they intend to charge commuters. Plans must be submitted by May 17th. The MTA is possibly looking for this service to be installed by the end of the year.

“Real” online news sources have taught me that readers are stupid and require pictures. Often hilariously stupid and almost irrelevant pictures. Perhaps I can purchase one of these for riding on the train. That may be a step up from Crazy Cat Girl to Complete Crazy Nut Job.

Do me a favor though, and don’t tell my boss. The Post talked to a wonderful woman named Anna Greatbach, who said, “It’ll give me a great chance to keep in touch with… my employer on the way to work. That can be a huge advantage to businesses… when employees can be working for them outside the office.” Don’t give them any ideas!

I certainly would use the service if it existed… even if they charged a small fee. (Though of course it would be much better if it were free). This comes after Amtrak announced not too long ago that Acela trains would be having wi-fi. Amtrak’s wi-fi would be free, at least during the “introductory” period. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) also offers wi-fi on their commuter trains, and that service is free. Hopefully those free services will serve as a precedent, and the MTA’s wi-fi will also be free. The only bad thing I predict about this wi-fi? I’d probably never again read a book on the train. And if you could play WoW on this wi-fi, I have a co-worker that would without a doubt begin riding the train again…

Last week I posted about the Park Avenue Tunnel Wreck in 1902. The engineer of the train involved in that wreck was named John M. Wisker.

I was curious to know the fate of this man after the events of the wreck. He was put on trial for manslaughter for the deaths in the wreck, but was ultimately acquitted. I can only imagine the emotional toll this all took on him. From the start of the whole ordeal, he was blamed for the wreck. Newspapers questioned his experience as an engineer. He was even held in jail for a short time.

This was a gruesome crash. Newspapers described some victims as boiling to death from the steam of the engine. Telescoping is a term that you don’t ever want to hear in a sentence alongside anything having to do with rails. Imagine a collapsible telescope, and how the tubes slide into one another to become smaller. Now imagine the same thing in a rail collision: the force causes the cars to collapse into one another, one car sliding inside the others, resulting in heavy casualties.

In 1903 Wisker’s trial began, and later on that week he himself testified about the unsafe conditions of his locomotive. On April 25th, Wisker was acquitted. The emotional toll on the man was clearly evident as the jury read the verdict. He was described as “on the verge of nervous collapse” and “he trembled so violently that he had to be helped to his feet by [his lawyer]“. “He is but a shadow of the big sturdy fellow who was arrested the day of the fatal collision in the Park avenue tunnel.”

It would be nice to know that this man lived a long and productive life after this ordeal. However, in 1909, a work-related accident claimed John M. Wisker’s life. He was age 40. At least he lived long enough to see the beginnings of electric service, and the start of construction on the new Grand Central, both results of the crash in 1902.

Admit it. You’ve probably seen a stupid person on the train. I see them frequently. People get on the wrong train all the time. Sometimes by accident, which I’ve done a few times. But if you end up getting on the wrong train because you were too busy talking on your cell phone to hear the ten messages spoken by the conductor telling you that this train was most certainly NOT going to the city, you don’t get any sympathy from me.

I had made these a long time ago, and forgot about them. My goal was to create a warning sign generator, where you could type in your own warnings and the site would create the image for you. I never did get around to doing it, but perhaps some day. Until then, enjoy these. Gina, a train conductor on my train, almost getting left on the platform again the other day (and did actually happen a year ago) made me want to go and dig these up. The first one below is dedicated to her. In fact I hear a version of this is now in the conductor’s lounge in Grand Central, a version with a spectacular little arrow pointing to the conductor on the platform, labeled with the name “Gina.”

Recently I’ve been having a lot of fun poring over the history of the Harlem Line and trains in the area. I mentioned a few weeks ago a new part of the site called the Historical Archives. When it first opened the Historical Archives had a few timetables, maps and newspaper articles. Now it contains well over a hundred different entries. I must thank the folks at the Research Library at the Danbury Railway Museum because many of the timetables in the Archive come from their collection. I figured that in addition to my normal blogging of current events and craziness, I shall from here forward designate Friday as Historical Archive day, and I will be posting an article about something interesting about this history of the Harlem Line. The navigation at the top of the site changed slightly, in order to accommodate the new category, called History.

To kick it all off, I thought it may be interesting to post about the 1902 Park Avenue Tunnel wreck. Trains today are relatively safe, however in the past there were many dangers, and many people died over the course of history…

Above are just some of the headlines of newspaper articles now in the Historical Archives. On January 8th 1902 the worst train wreck in New York City’s history occurred underground in the Park Avenue Tunnel. The tunnel had originally been built in 1876 to make Manhattan safer by removing the tracks from aboveground. However low visibility in the darkness, and especially the smoke from coal-burning locomotives, made the tunnel quite hazardous. This was not the first wreck in the tunnel: accidents had occurred in 1891, where six people were killed, and 1882, where two people lost their lives.

At first, the engineer John M. Wisker was blamed for the accident. He had missed several signals, and he was controlling the train that slammed into the train in front of it. Ultimately, Wisker was acquitted – the dangers and low visibility in the tunnel was to blame for the crash. Fifteen people died as an immediate result of the crash, and several others died in the hospital shortly after. The deaths, however, were not in vain: they provided the final push for electric service on the line, and led to the replacement of Grand Central Depot. It was reborn as the Grand Central Terminal that we know today, and opened in 1913. The first regular service on the new electrified line ran to White Plains in 1910, an article of which also appears in the archive.

If you are interested in learning more about the Park Avenue Tunnel Wreck of 1902, and the influence on Grand Central, you should certainly check out Grand Central, a part of PBS’s American Experience, which is viewable online.

If I haven’t said it before, I think it is pretty cool that MTA has been embracing social media, and the various agencies have twitter accounts. There’s MTA, Metro-North, Long Island Rail Road, New York City Buses, New York City Subways, MetroCard Promotions, and the NY Transit Museum. The Transit Museum seems to be the newest of the bunch. A little less than a month ago, the museum sent a tweet, giving a little sneak preview of the new exhibit opening in the Annex in Grand Central, which has been closed since January:

How long does it take to make exhibit mounts for 100 ceramic sherds? Our preparators will know soon.

Why exactly were they making exhibit mounts for ceramic sherds? It doesn’t much sound like something transit-related. But in fact, all of the objects on display in the new exhibit do in fact relate to public transit… they were all excavated from under the South Ferry subway station. I’ll let the museum take it from here:

Construction in New York City is always complex, but it raises particular concerns when it cuts through the most archeologically rich section of town. In February 2009 a new South Ferry subway station opened on the southernmost tip of Manhattan, a place where environmental, historical, and commercial interests collide. In order to build the station, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) was required to conduct an archeological review and excavation. This provided an extraordinary glimpse into the very place that the modern city has its roots, and the basis of an exciting new exhibit at the New York Transit Museum. Where New York Began: Archeology at the South Ferry Terminal will be on view at the New York Transit Museum Gallery Annex and Store from March 18 – July 5, 2010.

In addition to unearthing portions of the city’s early infrastructure, excavations yielded over 65,000 artifacts, including ceramic sherds, shells, coins, tobacco pipes, and architectural materials. These pieces document 400 years of city life and embody the cycle of building, razing, and rebuilding that is a hallmark of New York City. Over 100 of these objects will be on view along with historic maps and photographs, and field images and video of the archeologists at work.

This also marks the grand reopening of the museum’s retail store, which features a dynamic new design, new fixtures and lighting to better showcase the Museum’s unique product mix.

The museum is going to have an opening for members on the 18th, which I will be attending. I’ll be sure to take lots of photographs, and post them up!

A few of you may recall me writing about my antics at the Goldens Bridge train station in December. There had been some vandalism, and I thought I’d cover it up with amusing signs until Metro-North decided to fix it all. The first sign I posted had a picture of a raccoon, and the title said “Cat Found!” Included on the bottom of the sign was a phone number to a voicemail box I registered on the internet. If you call it, I get the message forwarded to my email box as a WAV file. A few months later (now, in March) images of the poster made their rounds on the internet. And I got a bunch of calls (some of which may or may not be from students from an unnamed school that ride my morning train). These are some of the better the messages that I got. My personal favorite is Mr. Captain Obvious, who suggests I should change my phone number. I figured I’d post it up here, since I know some of my readers thought the sign funny, and were wondering if anyone would call.

Imagine that, today I get to be a food critic! My friend Despina is fasting for Lent, and was looking for a decent place to eat (her variety of “fasting” is essentially eating vegan), and suggested Valhalla Crossing, which right next to Valhalla’s Metro-North station, and historically, was the original station building. I see the place just about every day on the way to work, yet had never gotten a chance to eat there.

Of course I brought my camera for documentary purposes, and the decor was quite nice in the place, so I took quite a few pictures. Our waitress told us that most of the woodwork in the room where we sat was not original, but the floor of the bar is the original station floor. Trains regularly pass by the place, which is kind of cool to watch. The noise from said trains was not bad at all, I’ve heard and felt worse in the city when subways pass by underneath. Though thinking about it, during the lunchtime hours mostly M7′s were going by… I imagine one of the diesels passing by is sure to jolt you from your reverie.

Throughout the place were framed prints and photographs of train-related memorabilia, as well as original photos of the Valhalla station, with the original platform. There was a caboose room in which you could eat, which we took photographs of. Of course all the people eating in the room had pause their conversations to turn and look. This is why I often feel shy about taking photos in public. I quite liked the large painting of the steam train that was not far from our table, but my friend kept saying to me that the plume of steam looked like an umbilical cord. Delightful imagery for lunchtime.

The food itself was pretty good. I am notoriuosly picky about my food, of which most people who know me can wholeheartedly attest to. I ordered the “Third rail” mostly because I was amused with the name. It contained chicken with buffalo sauce, bleu cheese, lettuce and tomato on a wedge. If I had to find a fault in it at all, I would have to say, “you call that buffalo sauce?” Weak and hardly spicy. The bleu cheese should complement the buffalo sauce, not overpower it. Alright, perhaps I am just bitter because my friend’s wrap looked better. If you go to Valhalla Crossing, try a wrap, they look good. And the onion rings look better than the fries. But they’re so awesome that they’ll allow you to get a little bit of both if you want. Either way, the Valhalla Crossing is pretty cute, and I’d certainly go back. They get major points from me because there were no big, black hairs in my food, which happened to me down the road at the North Castle Diner. There’s a place I’d never revisit.

Anyways, be sure to take a look at their website, ValhallaCrossing.com. My web designer nature must make me of course say that with the interesting decor of the place, they really could have carried that over and made an awesome website, but unfortunately they chose an out of the box template look, which saddens me slightly. (I can redesign that for you guys. Call me!) But really, go take a visit. Valhalla’s got some nice little places to eat, all in walking distance of the train station. Another favorite of mine being Mughal Palace, an Indian restaurant across the street from the station. Yummy.

Apparently Metro-North has gotten fed up with the pigeon problem in White Plains. Maybe they were embarrassed by the fact that people were videotaping, and blogging about it. Or maybe they were getting a little pissed off that birds that have pea-sized brains were outsmarting them. Either way, last week I noticed something new at the station. Pigeon traps. With all the snow I didn’t really get a chance to post anything about the traps. But I did happen to get into a conversation in the waiting room with a woman about them. Really, the pigeons aren’t harming anything. In fact they are eating the crumbs off the floor, which is more than what some of the cleaning people manage. Their antics are amusing, and Metro-North could probably be spending money worrying about other things, rather than purchasing pigeon traps to put throughout the station. Even if they had the traps on hand, someone had to place them, and that takes time. Time that could have been spent doing other things. Like cleaning the bathrooms? Or going after the annoying people that smoke in the waiting room, or beg for dollars? I’d prefer the pigeons over those.

Now, remember whose blog you are reading. Obviously, I had to put up a sign about this. Someday I may use my talents for the good of man-kind. Today? Not so much.

Here are higher resolution images so you can see all the text:

So far I haven’t seen any pigeons dumb enough to get caught. Traps are located behind the benches in the waiting room, and on top of the ticket machines by the window. Truly the question is, what happens to the pigeons if they are in fact caught? Taking them outside the station and letting them go would do little, they’d probably come right back in. Do they get sent up the river to pigeon prison? Are they gassed by employees in a dark, back room? Your guess is as good as mine. In a few weeks the problem will work itself out anyways, traps or no traps. The weather will be warmer, and the pigeons wont need to be inside. They aren’t dumb. They come inside because of the cold. Hell, I know a lot of crazy people that do that too!

As an unrelated bonus, I figured I would include some amusing video I saw on YouTube, of a pigeon riding public transit. The pigeon’s name is apparently Henry Goodfeathers. Looks like the video was filmed somewhere on the subways of Toronto.

More polite than a lot of human subway passengers