Spent a little time on Saturday at the train station taking pictures of all the abandoned/seldom used commuter bicycles chained to the rack (that doesn’t sound very good). I love the Metro-North stations and photograph them frequently. I also like to use cash on the ticket machines because they return golden dollars as change.
One of my favorite stations (mostly for sentimental reasons) is St. Margarets (operated by South West Trains) in London, UK.
(1) Coffee Beyond the Same Old Grind (WSJ – Registration Required)
(2) A quote from The Republic Of Letters: An Interview With Nancy Pope by Joshua Bauchner
“A central point of the logistics of the post was the clerk’s memory. The clerks had to know thousands of cities, towns, addresses, and train schedules, so they could sort mail to be taken once they arrived at the next station—not only to that station for the local area but to another train for destinations afield of the main trunk route. If I’m sorting mail between Cleveland and Chicago, I have to know every stop between those cities, addresses in Chicago, and the trains that I’m going to intercept at any particular stop along the way.”
(3) A Historic Arrival: New York’s Grand Central Turns 100 (NPR)
(4) A quote from Straphanger by Taras Grescoe
“Shibuya, a district that is home to one of the Yamanote line’s biggest stations and the headquarters of the Tokyu Group, is Tokyo at its most intense. Scuttling across the pedestrian scramble in front of the station plaza, overlooked by a chattering, 30-foot-tall anime penguin on the screen above, I was keenly aware that I was in Tokyu territory. Behind me was a high-rise shopping complex shaped like a silver silo, topped with the glowing red figures 109—clever shorthand for “Tokyu”: the Japanese character for 10 is to; 9 is read kyu. Towering above Shibuya station was an exclusive Tokyu hotel; up the street was an outlet of Tokyu Hands, a multilevel departments store and do-it-yourselfer’s paradise. Running between the skyscrapers were the elevated tracks, the foundations of Tokyu’s fortunes, that kept Shibuya humming with a constant supply of commuters from the western suburbs. Today, Tokyu is Japan’s largest rail-based conglomerate, with annual revenues of $12 billion.”
(5) A quote from Rome: A cultural, visual, and personal history by Robert Hughes
“The parts of the imperial baths that are still standing have always afforded inspiration to architects—including, especially, those of the past century. Roman thermae supplied the models for those mighty expressions of the mystique of early-twentieth-century American travel, Grand Central Station, and the former Pennsylvania Station (1902-11), by McKim, Mead & White—with its waiting room modeled on the Baths of Caracalla but enlarged by a quarter—demolished in 1963, when, in one of the worst outrages ever inflicted on Manhattan, it made room for squalid warren that replaced it.”
(6) Limestone Photo Archives: Main Street Station