Scattered Thoughts . . .

W hen we visited Manhattan with Lukey and Kenzie back at Christmastime, we never did tour the new Grand Central Madison part of Grand Central Terminal so we were seeing this new part of Grand Central for the first time just this past weekend.  If we had the time back at Christmastime, we would have spent a little time exploring this new extension to Grand Central.  It just so happens that our Long Island Railroad train arrives in this new extension to Grand Central so we were finally able to experience this new train station ourselves. This part of the station is quite large and extends for six blocks underground...  very much  underground at about 180 feet below street level.  Consequently, we encountered numerous sets of stairs and escalators to get back up to street level.  One of these escalators is noteworthy which I will mention later in this blog entry. When we stepped out of the train, we were on a beautiful, clean and bright station platform!  Even the kids said, "Wow&quo

A fter 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 li