Heading to Manhattan

After our absurdly long drive to Long Island the previous day, we got up early the following morning to catch a train on the Long Island Railroad.  

Our hotel was backed-up against the railroad tracks so Lukey spent much of the night watching trains go back and forth past our windows.  There was only an alley between our hotel window and the elevated railroad tracks.  

Most of the Long Island Railroad is electrified but I had forgotten that the far eastern end of Long Island still needs diesel engines to run trains.  I hadn't heard a diesel run on the Long Island Railroad in decades so was shocked to hear a diesel pass by the hotel that night.  The following day, my dad reminded me that the eastern end of Long Island is not electrified so they need to pull the passenger cars with diesel locomotives.  The sound of that diesel passing by our hotel instantly conjured up visions of Long Island Railroad diesels in the 1960s and 1970s though!

In the morning, we were all ready to go a little earlier than we needed (which is always a good thing) so we headed out on our three block walk to the station a bit earlier than necessary.  I figured it would be wiser to wait at the station rather than wait in our hotel room in case we had some unexpected problem getting to the train.  

Consequently, the sun was still low in the sky as we walked to the train station...

We had about a half hour to kill at the train station waiting on our train to arrive...

While we waited, I was pointing out different buildings that were visible from the station platform and telling the kids stories about how each of these buildings relates to me or how it relates to something that happened to me.  

Below, is a photo of St Agnes Cathedral where I went to elementary school as seen from the train platform.  The kids noticed and commented on how large it is compared to churches in Vermont...

One or two express trains zipped through the station at high speed which startled Kenzie a bit...

And, we're finally on the train to Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan...

Lukey was exceptionally happy to be a passenger on yet another railroad so he was a bit excited...

The train arrived on schedule and got us to Grand Central on time so we had absolutely no problems with that!  Since it was early on a Saturday morning, the train was mostly empty.

When we arrived at Grand Central, the doors to the train opened to a very bright and new part of the station called Grand Central Madison.  

Oh, "Madison" reminds me...  A lot of movies were filmed in Manhattan and I'm always pointing out filming locations and describing movie scenes to the kids whenever we have them with us in Manhattan.  It seems they haven't seen any of these movies that I am always referring to though so I end up needing to describe the movie and the scene in great detail.  

This time, when we passed a Madison Avenue street sign, I stopped them at the corner and asked if they had seen the movie "Splash".  They hadn't, as usual, so I had to explain the scene where Darryl Hannah chooses the name Madison.  I described a little bit of the plot and then described her choosing the name Madison upon seeing this street sign but it sort of fell on deaf ears and expressionless faces since they had no idea what I was talking about.  

Anyway, we made it to Grand Central Terminal on time which was really nice after our previous day of long travel delays.