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.

That’s right. Documentary purposes.

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.

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In other news, I got a call today on my sign phone line. Whenever I go and put up crazy signs at the train station, I always include a phone number at the bottom. It is a voicemail box number, and it isn’t answered by anyone. Yesterday’s pigeon sign had a message on the bottom “To report suspicious pigeon activity, call: 206-376-0748.” Apparently someone thought they’d have a little fun of their own, and sang me a song. A dirty song.

Ok, who is going to admit to it? I bet it was one of my amusing online readers. (My friend thinks it was the Crazy Coat Guy in White Plains) Fess up! Or just call and sing me a song. 206-376-0748. Major points go to whoever can make up the most awesome “Harlem Line Song.”

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

I figured this would be an opportune time to post a bunch of the pictures I’ve taken during the snow. Some of the pictures I know I’ve posted before, but I added them all to a nice new gallery called Winter on the Harlem Line. I have a lot more photos which I’ll be scrounging up and adding to the gallery when I can.

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This morning’s weather has already turned out to be rather wet and crappy. Many wet people, some of which forgot their umbrellas and looked like drowned rats, dripped on me during the ride in. But if you happened to be in White Plains this morning, several folks braved the horrid weather to pass out Nescafe coffee to the commuters. Unfortunately it was only packaged instant coffee, not cups of the stuff, but hey, it was free. And free stuff always cheers everyone up.

However, the weather is supposed to get worse, this rain turning into snow. Some have been calling it a Snowicane. The Snowpocalypse. Snowmageddon. The Weather Channel refers to it as February’s Fury. I urge you all to visit the grocery store and purchase several gallons of water, in case you somehow get stuck in your house and can’t come out. And most importantly, throw your hands in the air and begin panicking. Seriously now, Snowpocalypse? The supposedly respectable news sources use these terms, and I think it is a joke. I hardly consider myself a reputable news source. I could see me coming up with this junk, along with some fake pictures of pigeons pulling streetcars. But when the “real” news does, I just have to laugh.

As of right now Metro-North is running on a regular schedule with few, if any, delays. This may change as the day wears on, so if I hear anything I’ll let you all know. I’ll be tweeting…

I left work a bit early today as I wasn’t feeling too spectacular, and on my way out of the station I noticed a bunch of cardboard boxes littering the ground…

Boxes? Are there good things inside?

Apparently Goldens Bridge has spiffy new machines for the folks that park in the metered section of the lot.

Ooooh, shiny…

I figured that I would take a few photos of the new machines. But then some guy walked up to me and started laughing at me. Then he pulled out his camera and also started taking photos. Oh well, that is about all the noteworthy stories to come out of Goldens Bridge for the past month or so. The only thing that could possibly be more noteworthy than that is if they actually washed the windows. Am I the only one that finds it annoying when somebody writes “Wash Me” in the dust of a dirty window? Except instead of writing “Wash Me” they draw the one thing that everybody on the planet Earth, irrelevant of their artistic skill, knows how to draw: a crude cock and balls. Sometimes I do think that those people that are supposed to be washing the stations are sleeping on the job…

If you haven’t noticed by now, I’ve become pretty engrossed in this whole researching and finding old railroad related stuff. I’ve apparently been referred to as a “closeted railfan” (and the “mascot of the Harlem Line”, but that is a different story). Honestly I have never thought of myself as a railfan. Railfans seem to have all this information tucked away in their brains about types of trains and how they function, and could probably tell you the model of whatever locomotive they’re looking at and a good portion of information about it too. I don’t know much about trains other than what I’ve visually observed. In fact sometimes I am a bit shy to post some of my train photography online, because all the railfans always identify their pictures with all that info they know. I am just sort of like, here is a picture. It is a train. The train says Metro-North on it, and I saw it at White Plains station. And thus ends my description of said train. I will admit that I like riding on trains, though I think for the most part it is more that I like watching people on trains. Or getting to know people on trains. I’ve met a lot of nice people on trains. And a lot of crazy ones too. But if you’ve been here before, you don’t need me to tell you that.

However, all this digging in the history books I’m doing may be enough to warrant the title of “railfan”. I assure you, I was not this way before I started writing this blog (nor did I take anything I said seriously at that point, but that too is another story). So I suppose this is my confession to the world. This is me coming out of the closet, if you will. I guess… well… I guess I am a railfan. Okay, I said it.

One thing that I did feel like sharing though, were some interesting postcard images that I encountered in my research. It is interesting to note that pigeons are such a nuisance today, and they certainly were a nuisance back in the late 1800’s for the New York and Harlem Railroad. Some things never change. Here is a postcard from Copake, which back in the day was part of the “Upper Harlem Line”. The Harlem Line no longer extends that far up.

I imagine the photographer there was attempting to get a picture of the station, when all of a sudden that one pigeon jumped up in the foreground. I do believe that is a historic example of what is known today as a photobomb.

One of the things you may not have known, however, is that when it started, the New York and Harlem Railroad operated streetcars in Manhattan. And some of these were in fact pulled by horses. A failed, not often talked about, alternate method was also tried, using specially-bred larger pigeons (of which were plentiful in the city). Here is a never before seen photograph of prototype streetcar #00, being pulled by one of the aforementioned large pigeons.

Pigeon-cars, as they were called never really seemed to “take off” in the city. I think the whole oversized bird thing turned off quite a few people. Plus the temperament of horses was a bit better than the birds. The pigeons’ downfall was an early outbreak of the Avian Flu, which led the city into a complete panic, and many helpless pigeons were “purged” for the sake of humanity. The year after an early version of the Swine Flu struck, leading New Yorkers to endeavor to purge another species, but the pigeons never came back into favor. It does seem that the larger variety of pigeon was driven to extinction, as we are familiar today only with their smaller brethren.

Well, I suppose that is it for today’s history lesson. It is at this time I must admit to you all that back in the day when I was a struggling graphic designer, I always figured that if I failed at design, I could always work in the photography department at the Weekly World News. I was quite heartbroken when they ceased print production in 2007, which led me to seek out “a regular job”.

Monday the 15th brings some service changes to the Bee Line Bus system in Westchester, one of them being the elimination of the AirLink route to Westchester Airport. Every morning after arriving at the train station in White Plains, I always saw the AirLink bus pull in. I don’t think I ever saw a single person get on that bus. Perhaps I was just there at an early time which no one rode, but if that was the typical amount of riders, I can understand why the route was cut.

I only took the AirLink once, which was back in September, when I had a flight out of Westchester Airport to Orlando. Picking the bus up right in front of the train station is quite convenient. Plus the ride only took around twenty minutes. You’ll still be able to take the bus to the airport (route #12), but you’ll have to catch the bus a block away from the train station, and it will take a bit longer. And, depending on the time, you might have to transfer. If you are lucky enough to catch a direct bus, the travel time will double to around 40 minutes. If you get stuck making the transfer, travel time will triple and will be a little over an hour. If you need to figure out how to get to the airport, you can use the Bee Line’s Trip Planner.

In addition to the AirLink elimination, several other bus routes will be having some changes, so if you are a Bee Line rider, I suggest you look at their Route Changes page.

A thick blanket of snow has covered New York today, a snow some media dramaqueens have called a “snowpocalypse”. I must admit I laugh every time I hear that term. While some folks were collectively crapping their pants due to snow, I instead decided to take a walk (after sleeping late of course, work was cancelled after all). Not far from my house (and from Goldens Bridge station) is an old railroad bridge with a lonely numerical designation: L-158. With the area covered in snow, it looked even more lonely.

Additional photos of L-158 can be found in the image gallery.

L-158 was once a railroad bridge, though the tracks are long gone. It was originally built in 1883 over Rondout Creek near Kingston, NY. In 1904 it was dismantled and reconstructed in Goldens Bridge to cover the expanding reservoir. The tracks were part of the Lake Mahopac Branch, which opened in 1872, and went from Goldens Bridge to Lake Mahopac. The Lake Mahopac Branch ended service in 1959, and the tracks were removed soon after. In 1978 L-158 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

All historical information and photographs come from Louis Grogan’s book The Coming of the New York and Harlem Railroad. Years for the photos above are as follows: 1951, 1948 and 1946

Ever since I moved to Goldens Bridge, I’ve always been fascinated by this bridge. It is situated on land owned by the DEP, and thus you must have a Watershed Access Pass in order to visit. I have a rowboat on the Muscoot Reservoir, and many summer days I went out on the water rowing underneath the bridge. And as witnessed by the photo gallery, took way too many pictures of the bridge. I’m really longing for the return of the spring and summer so I can go out and row again, and to see L-158 surrounded by greenery, as opposed to today’s snowfall.

If you’ve ever been to the White Plains train station a few times, it is highly likely that at some point you’ve encountered the guy that I’ve dubbed “The Crazy Coat Guy”. He’s a fixture of the station, and has been around long before I started commuting through the city of White Plains. He talks to himself, and he’s loud. Depending on the weather, he hangs out in the upstairs and downstairs waiting areas. He has some questionable taste in jewelry, and has been seen wearing big earrings up both sides of his ears. His taste in accessories isn’t much better, as he’s begun a love affair with womens’ purses. He has the craziest haircut, though due to the cold we haven’t seen it for a while. And now, it isn’t all that strange to be wearing a coat due to the temperatures. But come back in July on the hottest day of the year, and you’ll still see him wearing that coat, stalking around the station, and talking to himself.

Without the Coat Guy, I don’t think White Plains would be the same. But seriously, don’t you think he wears some of the craziest stuff? Wouldn’t it be awesome to dress him up yourself, in something more normal? Or something even more crazy? Guess what, now you can! You can dress up the Crazy Coat Guy in this spectacular flash game that I wasted quite a few hours of my life on! Every piece of clothing in the game (with the exception of the iridetheharlemline.com shirt) is something that I’ve actually seen him wear in real life (yes, even that leprechaun hat). So what are you waiting for? Get in there and dress up the Coat Guy! And when you’re done, click the button that says “Go Out” to see him stand on the platform!

A few of my spectacular creations…

I just happened to be looking through my photos on my cell phone, and I came across one that I had forgotten about. It is above. There had been a storm raging that day, but on the ride home it had begun to clear up. I snapped that photo when we were at Mount Kisco station. I was sitting near the door, and the train conductor, Guy, said to me, “come out and look here,” as he was standing on the platform. I ducked out of the train for about two seconds to gaze at it. Then engineer was wondering if he could go, and the conductor in the back, Dave, was like, “Wait, I think they’re looking at the rainbow. Isn’t that nice?” The whole thing took a matter of seconds, and my recollection of the dialogue is probably pretty off, but I smile when I remember that time. And really, I wish it was a nice day with a rainbow outside, instead of the cold and the snow.

I know a lot of people would agree with me. And a few of my avian friends. That would be the pigeons in White Plains. They of course are sick of the cold, and have begun hiding inside the station again. Apparently a recent addition in the past few weeks to the station were spikes added to the inside windows, a former popular spot for the pigeons. Now the pigeons have taken to some other spots, one being the ticket kiosks. I bet the machinery keeps those nice and toasty for the birds. I work for FUJIFILM, and we have photo printing kiosks in places like Walmart and RiteAid. And I’ve heard horror stories from techs that have to go out to service those machines, and have found animals that have made homes inside the machines because of the warmth. I can only imagine, and feel sorry for the poor chap that is going to have to service or clean those ticket machines at some point in the future.

I even have video, hooray!

I was amused though, on the MTA’s new site, they have a list of Frequently Asked Questions. One of which is how they are working to deter pigeons from roosting inside trains and stations. Their answer?

To address the problem of pigeons in our stations, we are testing a new system that drives away pigeons by sending a harmless, low-voltage electric shock through wires installed in areas where they perch.

Yeah, I wonder how that is working out for them… zap.