#trains

The Still Room Blog

Becky Fifield

Nov 5, 2013
2 min

Transit Tuesday: Maryland *facepalm*

OK, we all know it, I’m obnoxiously devoted to my home state. So when I read current “transit” news about Maryland transportation officials meeting with Frederick County Commissioners(1 November 2013), I was disappointed to read that it was all about widening I-70 and I-270. Ever since governments intentionally participated in the trashing of public investment in transportation in favor of the automobile, future funding that prefers interstates makes me yawn. Not only do we p

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Transportation Tuesday: Move Madison Square Garden NOW

Becky Fifield

Feb 26, 2013
2 min

Transportation Tuesday: Move Madison Square Garden NOW

Commuters rush through the LIRR entrance corridor past artwork that evokes the original and only Pennsylvania Station. Andrew Leicester. Ghost Series, 1994. Photo: RL Fifield. If you enter Penn Station through the Long Island Rail Road entrance, you’ll see reliefs along the corridor that depict the tumbling Corinthian columns of McKim, Mead, and White’s Pennsylvania Station (1910). If you’d like to grumble along with me, please follow these links to my prior posts about the d

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Transit Tuesday: Grand By Design Exhibition at Grand Central

Becky Fifield

Feb 12, 2013
1 min

Transit Tuesday: Grand By Design Exhibition at Grand Central

After a boozy brunch with Dr. V’s cousins, we wandered up the sunny side of the street to Grand Central Terminal, celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. The kiosks were great. You can ask about various GCT topics at the push of the button. When they aren’t talking, they just look around and look bored. A former customer service manager relates that GCT before the renovation was “a hell hole.” RL Fifield 2013. The former waiting room space is used for exhibitions and eve

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Becky Fifield

Jan 15, 2013
2 min

Transit Tuesday: The Walking City

Colleagues of mine were up from DC this week for the Alliance for Response NYC program “Community-Based Recovery After Superstorm Sandy” (see the post here). One of them exclaimed “this is New York! look at everyone walking along the streets!” New York didn’t used to have a monopoly on street life. Certainly, my city lends itself to walking. The tight space forces us to live more closely together, further drawn together by our renowned subways, busses, and trains to closely c

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Transportation Tuesday: ICE from Munich to Bonn

Becky Fifield

Dec 18, 2012
2 min

Transportation Tuesday: ICE from Munich to Bonn

Munich Hauptbahnhof. RL Fifield 2012. I had a crazy scheme for last week’s trip to Germany. My last visit was to Dusseldorf and Cologne. I had work in next door Bonn this time around. I wanted to see something else of Germany besides its western edge. I flew into Munich and spent the day there. How do you get to Bonn if you are train geek? You take the ICE. I got a bit more of a train ride than I bargained for: it was a 5 1/2 hour ride. What’s on the Menu? New York Public Lib

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Becky Fifield

Dec 11, 2012
2 min

Transit Tuesday: Munich Train Station

Hauptbahnhof. It has to be my favorite German word. Feeling adventurous, I decided to fly directly to Munich and check out the city before going to Bonn for an appointment. This meant a five hour train ride via the ICE, the express service which gets up to a thrilling 157 mph between Frankfurt and Cologne (the speed staved off the increasing jet lag and my need to nod off). There are two places I check out in every town: the market, and the train station. Like so many German

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Wanderlust Wednesday – Worcester, Massachusetts, by way of Springfield

Becky Fifield

Dec 5, 2012
2 min

Wanderlust Wednesday – Worcester, Massachusetts, by way of Springfield

Answer: Corsets. The Royal Worcester Corset Factory was the largest U.S. employer of women in 1908. Elizabeth Freake and Baby Mary. Worcester Art Museum. I spent all of 18 hours in Worcester last week. It has the bones of any successful city of the turn of the century. Money made in industry went to civic projects, art museums, and city beautiful movements. It is home to the American Antiquarian Society, a repository of historic newspapers, prints, and myriad other documents

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Museum Monday – Here Come the Trains Again: Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania

Becky Fifield

Dec 3, 2012
2 min

Museum Monday – Here Come the Trains Again: Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania

Once again Transit Tuesday is busting in on Museum Monday. RL Fifield 2012. The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania is located in Strasburg, just outside Lancaster. It’s close to the outlet store schlock on Route 30 east of Lancaster, but once you turn off the main drag, the view gets rural real quick. Strasburg is amazingly preserved, and on the eastern edge of town is a collection of over 100 rail cars. Across the street is the Strasburg Rail Road. We visited Thanksgiving weeke

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Becky Fifield

Nov 20, 2012
2 min

Transportation Tuesday: Amtrak’s Quiet Car

I was putting together another post on Amtrak when I stumbled across a New York Times Opinion on Amtrak’s Quiet Car by Tim Krieder. The Quiet Car is at first brilliant: I settle myself away from the din of the other carriages. There’s the cellphone conversation we’d rather not hear about (surgery, sales, boyfriend). The businessmen strutting their acumen to each other. The travelling family unaware that others are using the train. The Quiet Car is for single people who enjoy

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Wanderlust Wednesday: A Speedy Trip to Ottawa

Becky Fifield

Nov 14, 2012
2 min

Wanderlust Wednesday: A Speedy Trip to Ottawa

Work took me kicking and screaming to Ottawa this week. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of Canada. It was just a chock a block week and I managed to miss being in-country for a presidential election again. Parliament in Ottawa from the Musee de la Civilisation in Gatineau. RL Fifield 2012. What I didn’t realize until this trip was arranged that the greater city straddles Canada’s two identities. On the southern side of the Ottawa River is Ottawa proper, with its iconic Parl

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Becky Fifield

Oct 23, 2012
1 min

Transit Tuesday: City Hall Station

On the top of my list of cool things to do in New York City: visit City Hall Station, the abandoned star of the New York city subway system. Opened in 1904, the one way loop station’s design and close proximity to the Brooklyn Bridge station doomed it for obsolescence from the beginning. It was closed in December, 1945. Today, it’s used to turn around downtown 6 trains and deposit them back on the uptown bound local track. City Hall Station. RL Fifield photo, 2010. You can to

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Becky Fifield

Oct 10, 2012
2 min

Wanderlust Wednesday: Seattle

Seattle. RL Fifield, 2012. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Brilliant sun and a cloudless sky marked my days in Seattle. Like San Francisco and Vancouver (see my post here), Seattle has that feeling that the gold rush just went bust. Yes, it is a highly successful town, but there’s something seedy about it – the SROs, seedy hotels, wanderers. Pike Place Market was full of tourists. I found Piroshky, Piroshky, a Russian pastry place, where I could have a more savory breakfa

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Transit Tuesday: More Griping about Penn Station

Becky Fifield

Oct 2, 2012
1 min

Transit Tuesday: More Griping about Penn Station

Inari sushi – sweetened deep fried tofu skin stuffed with rice dressed with rice vinegar, salt, and sugar. Photo by miwa_in_oz There is one redeeming thing about the current New York Penn Station – it’s Penn Sushi. They have great inari sushi. I always stop in to see the very friendly staff and pick up sushi whenever I travel by train. As for the rail station, it’s a joke. The large photographs of the original New York Penn Station posted around today’s Main Concourse just ba

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Becky Fifield

Sep 19, 2012
1 min

Wanderlust Wednesday: Vancouver

RL Fifield 2011. Mountains. The Canadian version of Seattle. West coast cool. I’d heard so much about it, and while the mountains are thrilling, I expected something more. So much of the town consists of modern apartment buildings set back from the street – indeed, my hotel room was a full apartment twice the size of my own in New York (but that’s not an uncommon occurrence). The scrubby old Gastown made me think I found something unique to Vancouver, but then found the stor

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Transportation Tuesday: A Moment on the Baltimore and Ohio

Becky Fifield

Sep 11, 2012
1 min

Transportation Tuesday: A Moment on the Baltimore and Ohio

I was inspired by this salted paper print from the 1850s of people posing for a photograph on a Baltimore and Ohio engine. I thought about the women in their stays and hoops, and wondered if they were boosted up onto that ledge, or if they walked out from the cab to rest upon their perch. Either way, it’s not easy with your torso confined (I had to crawl up into a 5 ton troop transport in eighteenth century stays to be transported for a reenactment once – a National Guardsman

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Becky Fifield

Sep 4, 2012
1 min

Transit Tuesday – The Elevated in NYC

The El still lives on in Chicago – I’m not sure that they could live without it. But the El once was a vital part of New York transportation, an improvement on surface railways, pre-dating the underground subways, and discarded hastily during the rise of the automobile. The last elevated line in Manhattan was the 3rd Avenue line, at last abandoned in the Bronx in 1973. The Els were noisy and cast shadows on the streets below. There were once elevated lines on 3rd, 6th, and 9t

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Becky Fifield

Aug 28, 2012
1 min

Transit Tuesday: Dusseldorf to Cologne

Say it with me: Hauptbahnhof. What a great word “train station” is in German. I was recently in Germany for work and I had a free day to pop over to Cologne. Unfortunately, it was Monday and nary a museum was open. But I did enjoy using the excellent Deutsche Bahn (German Railway). There were several options of varying costs and speeds, and while I planned to try the zippy ICE (Intercity Express), the timing just wasn’t right. Next trip. Cologne train shed. RL Fifield 2012. I

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Becky Fifield

Jul 31, 2012
2 min

Transportation Tuesday: Amtrak Fiction

I’ve been working on a short story for years about a friendship slipping into an unfamiliar place. One of these days I’ll fish it out of the muck. In my book (ha), trains are good places for writing, and good places to write about. I don’t feel the same way about airplanes, where you enter a sort of stasis between points A and B. This introductory portion was inspired by the Northeast Corridor, the stretch of rail between New York and DC. A jolt over the old join in the rail

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Transportation Tuesday – The Atlantic Avenue Tunnel

Becky Fifield

Jun 12, 2012
2 min

Transportation Tuesday – The Atlantic Avenue Tunnel

Group listening to Bob Diamond of BHRA in the tunnel under Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn. RL Fifield, 2010. Until December 2010, at the intersection by the Trader Joes on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, you might find a few traffic cones surrounding a popped manhole cover. Dozens of people queued on the nearby sidewalk. Between green lights, a few people would cross the street to the area in the middle of the intersection, and one by one, slip below the asphalt on a household ladder

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Wanderlust Wednesday – What I Did with Spare Time in Ohio

Becky Fifield

Jun 6, 2012
2 min

Wanderlust Wednesday – What I Did with Spare Time in Ohio

Last Tuesday, I was somewhere in eastern Ohio. I had access to a car, and nothing to do for eight hours. You got it – it was Lincoln Highway time. An early restored Texaco Station, now housing a Bail Bonds establishment. RL Fifield, 2012. When I last traveled this portion of the Lincoln in 2005, the road wasn’t as well marked as it is today. I was travelling east bound on the northern 1913 route. (as a side note, gas was .99 the last time I did the LH, Tuesday it was 3.52) To

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