I was in Grand Central in NY and I Noticed that perhaps GC is not that Grand After All…Clevelands Tower City seemed bigger and Torontos Station is Huge too!. My favorite is Washington Union…I dont partcauly like LA becaus out outdoor boarding and the fact that the nieghboorhood still sucks.
St.Lois I Know used to be bigger as well. Also it seems that NY Penn Station has more trains
In the 1950’s Chicago Union had a lot more trains and was bigger.
Penn Station of NYC was the grandest of them all…The structure that was demolished in the mid 60’s…!
It took up an entire city block as I recall.
When I was in NYC in June 2003 with my wife and grandson we boarded a cab a block from Times Square and asked to be taken to Penn Station on the 8th Avenue side. The cabby asked: “How do I get there?” No kidding! He didn’t know the route between two of the foremost landmarks in NYC!
You need to tell him, “It’s under Madison Square Garden.” If he doesn’t know where that is, get another cab.
As listed on Amtrak’s website, New York City’s Penn(sylvania) Station is their busiest in the country, handling over 8.7 million passengers in FY 2004. Grand Central isn’t even listed as an Amtrak stop. Under New York Central, Grand Central was a terminal, so it may not be as much use to Amtrak. Don’t recall hearing this was ever changed. Did you see what trains served Grand Central? Commuter maybe?
You equate “Grand” with mere size. I would say it’s grand in terms of the of the ceiling painting of the zodiac night sky, architecture, art work, the NYC trains that ran from there, etc. The restaurants in GCT are head and shoulders in quality above any other station’s in the US. There’s also a very good gourmet food market. If I had to pick a station to be stranded in for a lifetime, it would be GCT.
There’s something that deserves notice all right – he spoke English. As far as directions go, that’s par for the course, although it’s astonishing because you were already so close. I would have walked.
I told him that but he still didn’t know. I directed him. Heck, it was 39 years since I lived in NYC and I still knew which streets to take. We had already put a lot of luggage in the cab trunk (he didn’t help) and didn’t want to hoist it out again.
We got out right at the correct corner for baggage check. He didn’t help us get the bags out either. Earlier in our vacation we had a cabbie who was unsure how to get to the Museum of Natural History.
London has the right idea about licensing cabbies. Even Paris was better. Scarier but better.
Don’t forget part of the deal of building GCT was that the New Haven had permanent rights to run into GCT as well.
…Yes, from what I have learned of the GCT it has been refurbished with millions of dollars in the past decade and it must be very beautiful in the main massive room now. I believe some years ago all traffic into it was changed to commuter, etc and Amtrak and Long Island and commuters serve the below ground Penn Station as we know it now…I had the opportunity to pass through Penn Station during WWII and what an experience…Will never forget it…What a criminal act it was destroyed…
Two actually! 31st to 33rd Streets!
Whaddya expect pal! [:)]
London’s street layout is much more complicated than NYC’s, which is mostly on a grid, so I can understand the requirement for the “knowledge”. Supposedly, there is a rudimentary test to qualify to be a NYC cab driver. If it were anywhere as rigorous as London’s, however, NYC would have very few cabs.
Grand Centeral Terminal is used by lots of Metro North commuter trains and some time in the future when “East Side Access” gets built, it will have some Long Island Rail Road trains also. There is also talk of through operation of Shore Line East to GCT as a joint SLE-MN operation, so one may some day be able to again get as far as New London, CT on a train from GCT.
GCT currently has about twice the number of tracks that Penn has, making operations that much more flexible and convenient. There was a time when half the station was shut down, the whole Lower Level, yet the GCT still was then able to handle the commuter and the little remaining long distance traffic at the time.
Fitting the number of trains running into Penn, from NJT, LIRR, and Amtrak, is a real juggling act and is one of the real opertional challenges in North American railroading.
…What has happened to the plans to “rebuild” a “grand” station across the street from Penn Station in the old post office…?? Understand some work has been accomplished but not the grand structure envisioned by the planners right before 911 happened…Anyone know and can comment…?
As noted, depending on how you go about counting, there are a number of stations which are ‘bigger’ that Grand Central Terminal, both in North America and in Europe. However, that said…
In my humble opinion, having been in a number of them at various times over the past 60 years or so, there is no terminal – anywhere – which can (or could! I’m including Penn Station here!) beat Grand Central Terminal as the way to enter a city. Even today, watching people who have not been there, or to New York (and yes, there are some coming in on Metro North trains from time to time) come out of the trainshed into the concourse, and then into New York, one can see that this is one experience – and a very positive one – which they will never forget.
…Obviously over the years it’s been a changing transportation market but in my opinion…it’s a shame we’ve lost some of the great cathedral like stations in this country…What a shame another use couldn’t have been found to preserve them and renovate them into other, even transportation uses…but now they’re gone.
The conversion of the Farley Post Office Building to a “new” Penn Station is apparently going ahead. Amtrak has for the moment dropped out of the progject, but both NJT and LIRR want it to succeed. There are Fed funds comitted to the project and apparently New Jersey is willing to contribute also.
…Some years ago when Sen. Monahan was pulling the strings and pushing to make the project happen I saw articles that the funding was at that time already in place…and that was right before the 911 happening. {Somehow he had secured funding and had it in place quite well…}, at least that is what I understood at the time. There was and maybe still is computer images of what it was projected to look like…I found it on the internet.
Amtrak abandoned GCT because they were afraid they had to contribute for restauration. They built the west-side-connection from the Hudson river line into Penn Station. This makes interchange easier for passengers from upstate N.Y. to Philadelphia and Washington DC, too.
IIRC the voters of N.Y. state approved the money necessary to complete the East Side access for the LIRR to GCT last year.
The West Side line Amtrak now uses was RE built. It was originally NYC’s line to get freight to lower Manhattan. When the line was refurbished, the Sputen Dyevl? bridge also had to be rebuilt and a tunnel was dug to get into the west side of Penn Station.
The remainder of the West Side line below 31st street will be turned into a “linear park” once title is transferred from CSX to the city.
Mel Hazen
Jax, FL