Tommorrow it will be at Stamford Metro-North Station at slightly more generous hours than the ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ hours at the New Haven demo – 7 to 10 a.m. and from 4 to 7 p.m.

Until then, enjoy our video of the new car interiors:
Update: In answer to some emails, the video was created with a Canon HG10 HD Digital Camcorder, a Canon SD870IS for the stills, edited with Pinnacle Studio 11 on Windows Vista Ultimate. A Shure SM57 Microphone was used for the voiceover narration, connected to the PC via Creative Labs X-Fi .

The embedded version is in regular definition, see the high definition version here.

Originally appeared on: StationStops - Metro-North Train Schedules and NYC Commuting Blog See the original post here: M8 Rail Car Mockups At Stamford Station Tommorrow!

The embedded version is in regular definition, see the high definition version here.

(This video is also available on YouTube, Revver, and MetaCafe)

Metro-North put the new M8 Railcar prototype interior on display today for the general public at Track 8 in New Haven.

I got up at 5 AM, drove to New Haven, and spent the entire day producing this special report for you, so please sit back, enjoy, and share with your Metro-North friends.

Although the car will be on display at sometime in the future in Stamford and Grand Central Station, there were only 2 small 3-hour windows for people to view the car Wednesday and this morning (from 5 AM to 8 AM – yeesh!).

Because the display is so limited, I thought it was important to capture as much video and pictures as possible so everyone can see the new car, and – this is important – email MTA with your feedback and suggestions!!!

They are doing this so stuff you don’t like (like, say, the color scheme can be changed before delivery of the cars in late 2009. If you don’t offer your feedback, don’t complain when you get your new cars!

If you have a website please feel free to embed the video, all I ask is that you also mention StationStops in text and provide a link back to this story, as I put a lot of work into it. Thanks!

For those of you who cannot use your audio at work, here is the transcript of the video:

“New Haven Line Commuters have had to suffer the worst car conditions of the entire Metro-North system. Smelly restrooms, run-down interiors, and overcrowding due to so many of the old cars being constantly out for repairs.

Meanwhile, commuters on the Harlem and Hudson lines have enjoyed updated cars with modern vacuum toilets, head and arm rests, and improved lighting for years.

Early this morning at the New Haven Metro-North station, commuters finally got to get a glimpse into the long overdue improvements to their daily train ride – the new M-8 railcar.

The new M-8 cars are not scheduled to begin service until late 2009, but a prototype of the car’s interior was on hand so riders could check them out and provide feedback while there is still time to make changes.

Among the most important improvements to the new cars are the restrooms, which feature vacuum toilets to help control odor – this is probably the biggest complaint of the current cars. The larger size also makes these restrooms available to riders in wheelchairs.

This mornings visitors were probably most divided over the red color scheme. Some liked it a lot, some didn’t like it at all – one visitor called it ‘garish’ – but all agreed that it was an improvement over the current cars.

The new seats will be a welcome improvement for all riders, but especially for early morning commuter’s favorite pastime – SLEEPING. Currently there is no head support at all on the New Haven line trains, the new seats have comfortable headrests with flared sides to keep your drowsy seatmate from drooling on your shoulder.

Standard power outlets are available near the seats to charge laptops, cellphones, and iPods.

Overhead electronic destination signs will keep riders advised of upcoming stops.

Thanks to some additional space forward of the seat, using a small laptop is easier than in the current cars, but larger riders and laptops might still need to use the open face to face seats when computing on the go.

One visitor was disappointed that there were no plans to add internet access to the new cars.

The New Haven ride might not be as picturesque as the Hudson’s, but larger windows will at least give riders a better view.

The windows also assist the white walls and enhanced lighting to give the M8 very light and airy atmosphere.

Raj Kurup is a New Haven to Stamford commuter – he liked the new interior but suggested a feature he enjoys when he rides on Shoreline East.

Actually the New Haven Line already has lots of cupholders on one of its cars – but no word yet on whether the Tiki Bar Car will be making its triumphant turn on the new M8.”

Originally appeared on: StationStops - Metro-North Train Schedules and NYC Commuting Blog See the original post here: M8 Metro-North Railcar Prototype: An HD Video Tour By StationStops.com

Today’s Matt Lauer examined the mystery of Track 61 for the Today Show:

Via Trainjotting

Originally appeared on: StationStops - Metro-North Train Schedules and NYC Commuting Blog See the original post here: Track 61 – FDR’s Secret Train Beneath Grand Central Terminal Explored By Today’s Matt Lauer

Make sure you check your schedule carefully before leaving for work (and coming home) – although some lines are less effected than others, you may notice that some trains have been rescheduled – some by as little as a minute.

Make sure you double check that you are viewing the new schedule and not a cached copy of the page in your browser – at the top of the schedule table it should read ‘Through October 4, 2008′. If it reads ‘April 5th 2008′ instead, press CTRL-F5 on your keyboard to force your browser to get the latest version.

Originally appeared on: StationStops - Metro-North Train Schedules and NYC Commuting Blog See the original post here: New Metro-North Schedule Pages Are Up

Some probable reasons:

1. Most Americans have never actually ridden the NYC subway recently.
2. New York City used to have a significant crime problem.
3. New York City is the most popular setting for fictional crime drama in television, books, and movies (e.g. the entire Law and Order franchise).
4. Modern news and media is fond of sensationalizing individual missing children cases for months surrounding a single incident, as this topic is very popular with ratings.
5. Consensus on child safety has arguably gotten extreme in our modern ultraconservative society.
6. Internet predators and their sensationalism (i.e. To Catch A Predator).
7. One of the greatest human fears, and most personally traumatic events, is the harm to one’s children.
8. Growth in litigation has insured that any official recommendation of safety err on the side of unreasonable caution.

Ironically, however, New York City is now one of the safest large cities in the world, approaching that of Salt Lake City, Utah.

The question is, do we as a population have the capability of recognizing when our world becomes safer, and do we have the will and intelligence to roll back overly conservative protection of our children towards improving their (and our) quality of life?

New York Sun Columnist Lenore Skenazy does – so much so that she did something which is the buzz of moms all over New York .

She let her 9 year old boy ride the subway home.

Alone.

And I think she’s a hero in some areas which are sorely lacking in modern society – rationality, perspective, respect for children, and intelligent self-thinking.

In 1999, the Justice Department did a survey which reported that there were only 115 ‘traditional’ child kidnappings in the United States that year – i.e., kidnappings where a stranger or semi-stranger abducted the a child. Out of those 115, about half were sexually abused and/or killed, or about 57.

Since the time of those statistics, violent crime in NYC has gone down about 25%.

Without taking anything away from the horrific aspect of that type of crime…it just isn’t a common crime.

A common fear? VERY. A common crime? Not at all.

Furthermore, about 60% of attempted child abductions were foiled simply by the child fighting back, or through adult intervention. So, teaching your child to kick, scream, and fight off strangers puts them in a much better statistic. Add a mobile phone, and I’m sure its even better. Oh, and then there’s the expansion of the Amber Alert system, which has been responsible for recovering over 135 abductees.

To put it in perspective, a child is 1500X more likely to be abused in the home. At least for some kids, the subway is probably safer then coming home for dinner.

Of course, abduction is a great fear in having your child ride the subway alone, but there are other, greater, risks, like crossing the street or being in some other sort of accident, which far eclipse the statistical rarity of stranger abduction – but teaching them to cross a street safely is probably something a NYC kid should have been trained to do properly by age 4-5 (whether they are alone or not).

Which brings up the question – when is too much protection too much?

Personally, I think we’re already there, and have been for some time.

Employers and experts alike have been reporting some observable adult personality traits which have come about because of our trend towards ‘structured activity / child safety / positive reinforcement’ child-rearing.

For example, employers have complained that young graduates are showing a lack of competitive spirit and qualitative evaluation of their work and the work of others. Some say this is related to our tendency to make sure we include all kids in structured activities and not measure them by skill or achievement but rather congratulate them all equally on their participation and sportsmanship. Similarly, a trend to de-emphasize testing and grading in schools has the same effect, as well as failing schools which seek to ‘bell curve’ the entire class rather then report failure.

Modern parents are judged much more by what their child does not experience - exclusion, inferiority, bullying, drugs, accidents, alcohol, bad grades, sex, violence, – than what their children do experience – which today is officially limited to chaperoned play dates and soccer (no wonder they spend most of their time in their bedrooms with videogames – even simulations of everyday life (Like The Sims) is far more adventurous than their daily lives).

On a peer review, parents are judged by how well they sheltered their children – how much they played it safe – sometimes at the expense of the child’s achievement and happiness in adulthood. As a parent, if you got them out of the house alive at 18, you win. If they grow up into an timid anti-social agoraphobic depressive, that’s their own doing – the statute of limitations expires when they hit 18, even if you planted the time bomb.

Skenzy suggests:

“The problem with this everything-is-dangerous outlook is that over-protectiveness is a danger in and of itself.

A child who thinks he can’t do anything on his own eventually can’t.”

Bravo.

Originally appeared on: StationStops - Metro-North Train Schedules and NYC Commuting Blog See the original post here: Mom Sends 9-Year-Old Son Home On The Subway Alone, Both Live To Tell About It

(Warning – as some of these links which follow are to unmoderated Usenet content, some may be Not Safe For Work (NSFW).)

Actually, instead of just a train picture or two – how about I give you a peek at the largest collection of train pictures on the internet you’ve probably never seen?

Unless you are a true Internet geek from back in the day, or a hardcore file sharer, movie downloader, or, um, like porn, you have probably never heard of The Usenet or its history.

Which is too bad, because the Usenet has been around well before you took your first baby steps with Netscape (and actually had its own special Usenet newsreader distributed with ‘Netscape Communicator’ (yikes – remember Netscape Communicator? I used to even use that for Email!). Its a part of Internet history everyone should know about.

Without going into a lot of Usenet’s growing pains, suffice it to say that it was the original internet discussion group server. Its discussion groups – called ‘usenet newsgroups’ number in the tens of thousands, and participants in the millions worldwide.

However, although there are so many groups, the traffic has traditionally skewed itself into some very specific areas.

First is the techy groups, especially comp.os.linux.misc, comp.lang.perl.misc, comp.lang.c, where old-school programming gurus share their craft. Personally, I don’t think I would have ever mastered Perl without the friendly tutorage I found from the gurus in comp.lang.perl.misc.

Another skew is huge music, movies, and software downloads. Usenet is a popular place for pirates to drop their booty, and even more popular for others to pick it up. Although it can be tricky to use (it requires an NNTP account, newsreader software, and preferably some nzb search engines and maybe even a special archiver), it has the advantage that, unlike peer to peer, most anti-piracy companies cannot spy on your downloading – its pretty much between you and the NNTP provider.

The next niche is pictures, which is kind interesting. Of course, like basically any other uncensored user-submitted image service, 99% of usenet is adult newsgroups with pictures and video.

I’ll wait here and eat my lunch while you finish checking out those last links. Back already? Great, lets continue.

Besides adult content, there is indeed a (relatively) great deal of traffic in some other less steamy usenet pictures newsgroups. The top non-adult usenet image groups by traffic include comics/anime, desktop wallpaper, and lastly transportation photos – namely, the alt.binaries,pictures.autos, alt.binaries.pictures.rail, and alt.binaries.pictures.railroad groups. (Dont ask me why they split these last two, although I got in trouble with an MTA conductor once for taking pictures of train tracks instead of trains, so I guess there is some semantics there)

I have no idea why out of all the photo subjects in the world these groups are so popular, but they are. People have been posting their pictures of trains to alt.binaries.pictures.rail for well over a decade.

The best way to check out these photos is through usenetbinaries.com, which is a Usenet NNTP provider but also has thumbnail galleries for easily browsing Usenet groups with images and a flash video feature for viewing H.264 MPEG4 usenet video YouTube-style. alt.binaries.pictures.rail is one of the groups they let people browse the full size images for free, which is great.

Probably the best feature of the usenet rail newsgroups over other web-based galleries is that there has always been something new to see there, every day, for over 10 years. You cant beat that.

So enjoy!

Originally appeared on: StationStops - Metro-North Train Schedules and NYC Commuting Blog See the original post here: Train Pictures: The Largest Gallery Of Train Pictures You’ve Never Seen