Train stations, especially by night, invoke a certain image and commuter cars just ain’t it.

I just love that the bridge is called Hell Gate Bridge. It brings to mind images of demons and hellspawn erupting from some portal to the netherworld. Trains go in through one side of the portal, and a massive snakelike demon emerges from the other, wreaking havoc and laying waste to the countryside.

The minute a New Yorker gets on a train, all bets are off. What might pass for a civilized society above ground turns into a free-for-all under its streets. Stock brokers, school teachers, pastors, deacons, and all manner of person shed off their friendly personae when they enter the tunnels of the New York transit system. They are no longer men, they are morlocks in a Wellsian nightmare.

I’ve always found it interesting how people (myself included) tend to have this compulsion, when waiting on a train, to lean out over the tracks and look down the tunnel to see if the train’s coming. It isn’t limited to just trains, of course, but for some reason it seems more pointless. A train isn’t [...]