Just What Was The 'A' Train...?

[GP-9_Man11786]

Of course, Metro North non-stop from Grand Central Terminal to 125th is fast, and they do sell tickets for that trip. About double the price of the subway.

True…but MN is a whole lot safer than the subway. I rode MN (back before it was MN) to and from GCT back in the 1970’s and when we stopped at 125th. Street on our way in and out…wow, what a depressing area. I understand, though, that the 125th. Street area has really been cleaned up and “gentrified” quite a bit and upwardly mobile New Yorkers are finding it THE place to buy loft apartments, etc.

My Grandmother used to tell me of the days when she was a little girl and they lived in Manhattan (this would have been back in the very early 1900’s) and would travel up “into the country” up to 125th. Street in Harlem to buy produce and other items and traveling all the way to Yonkers and the like would take all day by horse and buggy. Grandma passed away in 1986 at age 89. Oh my oh my, how things have changed Grandma!

That area and the city as a whole for that matter got cleaned up quite a bit in the mid to late 1990s. Right after college (2006) two of my friends moed to 168th street and I rode the LIRR into New York and then the A up to their place quite often and never once felt unsafe.

[al-in-chgo]

Ya I rode the A Train when I was in New York 10 years ago. I was coming from JFK, but I can’t rememeber now if I had to switch trains…I don’t think so, I think it went through Brooklyn and under the river to Manhattan, I got off around 42nd st. to go to the hotel I would be staying at, so didn’t go all the way to Harlem.

Another good train ride in NYC is the commuter line going from Grand Central up the east side of Manhattan then along the east bank of the Hudson up to Poughkeepsie, the old New York Central ‘water level route’. IIRC 72 miles one way, in 1996 a round trip was under $20. Nice trip for a Sunday afternoon.

Circa 1980, I myself remember traveling via a rather slowpoke connection called “The Train to the Plane,” which IIRC consisted of paying what was considereably more than twice the normal fare (about $5 then), and taking the IND*** “A” train (or something low-lettered) out toward one of the Rockaways, Jones Beach possibly, and changing to a regular MTA bus to Kennedy. BTW a cheaper method – I don’t know if it still is the way it was – but around that time I also took Arthur (“Europe on ___ Dollars a Day”) Frommer’s advice and caught a subway out of Manhattan (might have been the no. 7 Flushing Line but am not sure). Anyway, at that transfer point there’s a bus that wanders thru the Steinway area of Queens somewhat west and south of La Guardia – Frommer said the route went through “Archie Bunker’s neighborhood” and he was quite right – but said bus, after wandering through that nabe, straightened up and made a beeline to the Int’t Terminal at Kennedy. Two regular fares: way cheap!

More to the point, I hope, are a couple of wee wisdoms you can take to the bank with the other mixed metaphors: <