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North Station Overload
Oct. 31st, 2007 12:00 pmI occasionally make gratuitous use of the commuter rail to get to/from work, and I tried going home last night that way. Except, well, it was after the Red Sox rally, and there were lots of people in North Station. Since they expanded the station area you could still breathe, but it was busier than I'd ever seen it before.
There seemed to be some execution problems. I saw one locomotive pouring out clouds of white smoke; I don't know if they ran that train or not. My Fitchburg train only had 5 coaches in it, MBCR is supposed to run minimum six-car trains. The South Action and Woburn express trains were making local stops, which might actually have been sensible under the circumstances. But most interesting was the announcement, "the Haverhill train on track 4 is now full, please return to the station if you're still on the platform." I'd never heard that one before; I guess people trying to get on that train were stuck waiting another half hour for the next one.
There's now a small bar/restaurant open on the east side of the expanded station area. It looked like it was doing pretty good business, but I didn't actually try to acquire food there. Probably in typical Boston style you're not allowed to actually take alcohol outside of the fenced-in area, even though certain other major US commuter rail systems serve drinks on the train.
There seemed to be some execution problems. I saw one locomotive pouring out clouds of white smoke; I don't know if they ran that train or not. My Fitchburg train only had 5 coaches in it, MBCR is supposed to run minimum six-car trains. The South Action and Woburn express trains were making local stops, which might actually have been sensible under the circumstances. But most interesting was the announcement, "the Haverhill train on track 4 is now full, please return to the station if you're still on the platform." I'd never heard that one before; I guess people trying to get on that train were stuck waiting another half hour for the next one.
There's now a small bar/restaurant open on the east side of the expanded station area. It looked like it was doing pretty good business, but I didn't actually try to acquire food there. Probably in typical Boston style you're not allowed to actually take alcohol outside of the fenced-in area, even though certain other major US commuter rail systems serve drinks on the train.
