The Great Train Rack

A commuter on the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad is a Kafkaesque character who rides out his days of penance on a train. His pendulous life is governed by back-room fortunetellers who write and rewrite the timetables. His journey is shepherded by faceless men in visored hats who carry metal beetles that chew up tickets and disgorge the microscopic confetti on the vests of the witless passengers. He knows not what his sins are; he just lives in the dim suspicion that at some Last Stop the Great Dispatcher will explain everything. But he never gets there; imprisoned aboard the mysterious rattler, he can only hope to wedge his way past his fellow riders into the bar car and brace himself with a couple of neat shots. Somewhere, along toward the end of the day, he escapes into the waiting doors of his station wagon and is carried home--duped, looped and pooped--only to relive the nightmare next day.

Flickering Flare. It began again one evening last week on the New Haven Railroad's 5:07, which left Manhattan's Grand Central Station and headed out for suburban Westchester and Connecticut. The commuters had settled down with their newspapers, homework, bridge games and liquid nourishment.

At 5:40 the train stopped, with the undercarriage of one car on fire. The passengers scuttled into other cars while trainmen vainly sprayed away with hand extinguishers.

Clanging away came New York's fire department, which ordered the electric power shut down on the 5:07's track (but not on the three adjoining tracks). As the fire fighters hosed the blaze, a southbound New Haven train roared up and before the engineer could stop for the flickering red flare, sliced the hoses, which whiplashed crazily around and injured eight firemen. Into the confusion raced fire department officials to begin a lengthy investigation. And all the while, from Grand Central Station and from stations to the north of the accident, came more trains, of the New York Central as well as the New Haven (they share some of the heaviest loaded trackage) until the cars were strung out like sausages and some 60,000 hapless commuters were involved.

Broken Life Savers. After an hour inside the sausages, the passengers--who, after years of similar grinding up, are normally calm in such circumstances--began to get restless. Some climbed out and began walking toward the nearest street. Others read and reread their papers, checked the contents of their dispatch cases for minor work undone. Poker and bridge games flourished and waned as some players ran out of money. The thirsty on trains carrying bar cars wedged there into one solid mass, and after all the good stock was gone, they were reduced to drinking warm beer. On one train, a passenger broke out a loaf of bread and passed it around. Another commuter shared his roll of Life Savers by distributing broken pieces to his comrades. One cheerful man found an air whistle and using it as a tuner, led his car mates in song. Cigarette supplies ran low, newspapers changed hands, a man penciled a sign announcing a new fare rise and marched grimly down the aisles; another stepped out on the car platform and got socked in the kisser with a snowball.

The hours drifted by like scattered papers. One commuter got off a stalled train out in The Bronx, took a subway back to Grand Central, got oh another train and got stuck all over again. Commuter James Hagerty, Dwight Eisenhower's former press secretary and now an ABC network vice president living in Eastchester, got aboard a train at 7:45. "The goddam thing kept starting and stopping in the middle of the tunnel," said he. "You couldn't get off and get a drink. I did the crosswords and read the want ads and still couldn't kill enough time."

At last the firemen gave the all clear, but the first train in line had drained its batteries, and again the passengers waited until an engine could drag it away. In all, 80 trains had been delayed or stopped cold, and many of the passengers, suffering immobility for as long as eight hours, did not get home till long past 1 a.m. Clucked one New Canaan (Conn.) housewife who waited at the station for her husband: "Watching those men getting off the train was the closest thing to a death march I have ever seen."

Within a day, all the commuters were back in line on all the trains, fingering their beetle-eaten tickets, hoping that the next holdup would be less excruciating. It was, in fact. Few days later the New Haven's 6:05 stopped about a mile and a-half short of the Stamford (Conn.) station, whereupon dozens of passengers resolutely got out and began marching in solid phalanx for town. Along the way, they spotted another stalled train starting up. They climbed aboard only to find that the train was not scheduled to stop at Stamford. But one heroic commuter had had enough for one week: he pulled the emergency signal, forced the train to stop, and he and his friends got off.

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