A Station Worthy of New York.

I am in the Moynihan Train Hall in New York City, named for the late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, and I am stunned. At last . . . finally! . . . there is a train station here that is appropriate and worthy of this great metropolis. And . . . well . . . it’s about damn time!

The original and truly magnificent Pennsylvania Station was torn down in the1960s by developers with political connections despite the opposition of a host of luminaries including Jacqueline Kennedy.

It’s taken all these years to come up with a suitable replacement . . . and God only knows what it took in terms of money and political favors and twisted arms, but the result is a very big Wow!

At the moment I am comfortably ensconced in the spacious first class lounge, having just enjoyed a chilled bottle of ginger ale and bag of chips—both complimentary.  I’m relaxing on a comfortable chair overlooking the main hall of this building, chatting with other equally-dazed passengers, including a couple who, like me, will be on the Lake Shore Limited headed for Chicago in a few hours.

He has made a couple of attempts to photograph the great hall with the camera within his phone, but has given up. “Too damn big,” he grumbled.

It’s big, all right, but it’s not perfect. Someone still has to figure out how to make public address announcements intelligible when blared out by way of a P.A. system into a huge hard marble-hard room. And passengers still have to line up and descend on escalators into the underground dinginess where trains arrive and wait to be loaded for departure. But I’ll take it!

And while I’m waiting, I think I’ll have another snack or two . . . just to tide me over. Did I mention the snacks are all complimentary?