My Longest Trip on the Long Island Railroad

This week's post picks up where last week's post left off. To see last week's post, click here. Last week I talked about riding the Acela to New York on a Sunday, where I would meet James and stay until Tuesday morning, when I would ride the Regional back home.

I arrived at Penn Station about 20 minutes late. That wasn't too much of a problem, the next Long Island Railroad train to Mineola was leaving in another 20 minutes, so I had plenty of time to buy my ticket. I bought my ticket and waited for my train to be announced. A Ronkonkoma train (not stopping at Mineola) was announced, boarded, and left on time. A Babylon train was announced, boarded, and left on time. My train was next. But they weren't announcing it. The scheduled departure time came and went, and still no word about my Huntington train. Then the announcer came on the loudspeaker and said that Long Island service east from Penn Station is suspended until further notice.

I needed a plan B. I figured, they only said service west of Penn Station was suspended, so I figured I'd take the subway out to Jamaica and try my luck there. I bought a Metrocard and got on the E line, which goes from the World Trade Center, through Penn Station, and out to Jamaica, which is in Queens. Jamaica is Long Island's busiest stop, all their lines except the Port Washington line go through Jamaica. I got off the subway, exited through the turnstiles, and was greeted by a pile of snow...underground. It was snowing so much and the wind was blowing so hard that snow had blown right into the subway station. I went up the snow covered staircase and ended up on the street...only there was so much snow that it was not recognizable as a street anymore. I went into the Jamaica terminal only to find out that all service had been suspended "until further notice." I was not the only stranded passenger, there were hundreds of others in that train station. I figured the AirTrain terminal would be less crowded, so I made my way upstairs to get there.

When you go upstairs, there is a long hallway that goes over the eight station tracks at Jamaica and connects them all together and to the AirTrain terminal. This hallway is roofed so it is protected from most weather but it is still technically outdoors. I had only ever been there on nice days before, so I always considered it to be indoors. However, when I went upstairs, everything was covered in snow and it was freezing cold because the roof turned the whole hallway into a wind tunnel. I trudged through the snow drifts and made my way through all the blowing snow and after what seemed like forever I reached the fully enclosed AirTrain terminal. By this point it was almost midnight, and I was hungry. I braved the elements and went outside to find a place to eat. I found place that had just opened that day and was open for 24 hours, so I grabbed a bite to eat there and went back to the AirTrain terminal. At that point there was nothing else to do except try to get comfortable for the night, as there were no trains, buses, or taxis running and I was still ten miles from my destination.

I did not sleep well that night. I was on a tile floor with no padding and there were hundreds of stranded people all around me. My biggest worry was about something getting stolen while I was asleep, but fortunately that did not happen. I went to the same place for breakfast that morning, and then tried to find out what was going on. It had stopped snowing and the sun was out, but the wind was still blasting the bitter cold air everywhere you went and New York was under two feet of snow. Trains, buses, and taxis were still not running. I had no choice but to wait.

Finally, buses started running, but only as frequently as they could dig them out of the snow. Nothing was running on a schedule, you just had to go to the nearest bus stop and hope one comes before it got dark. That is exactly what I did. I found my way to a bus stop for a bus to Nassau county and waited. The bus stop was near a store, so I went inside to get away from the wind. There I met some other people waiting for the same bus. They told me they had been waiting there for five hours and no Nassau bus had come yet. But I had no choice except to wait for the bus, so I did.

An hour later, around 2pm, a bus to Nassau County came. All of us in the store crowded onto the already packed bus and went on our way. The bus stops at the Mineola train station, which is where I would get off. I called James and told him to meet me there. The bus was crowded and slow, but at least I was finally going somewhere. On the way to Mineola, we passed other snowed-in cars and buses. One bus had been pulling out from a bus stop when a plow passed it, snowing it in. The bus was just left there, there was nowhere it could go. Fortunately, nothing like that happened to my bus, and I eventually showed up in Mineola. James was there to meet me and drive me to our grandparents house just down the street. When I arrived, I added up my travel time. 27 hours to get from Nashua to Garden City. By this point I was hungry and tired, and didn't stay up very late. I went to bed that night, knowing I'd be getting up the next day to go back home.

Tuesday morning dawned with good news from the Long Island Railroad. Limited service was running on the Huntington, Ronkonkoma, and Babylon lines. One train every hour was running on each line in each direction. Mineola is on both the Huntington and Ronkonkoma lines, so we figured there would be half hour service at Mineola. Not quite. While we were buying our tickets, three westbound trains went by. When we were ready to board a train, we waited two hours for the next one. When it finally came, it didn't stop. We waited another half hour or so before getting on the train. We figured this would happen and left a lot earlier than we really needed to on a normal day, so we made it to Penn Station with a little time to spare. However, the train back to Boston was late, which was good because it bought us a little time.

We made the Regional train and rode back to Boston relatively uneventfully. We got the T to Lowell and met our Mom there, who brought is back to Nashua, safe and sound.

Regarding the title of this post, I guess I never really took the Long Island Railroad to get to my grandparents house, but I had planned on it! All the photos in this post and more are viewable in a Facebook photo album located here.