A Brief RAIL FAN MEET to conclude 2015. #international #usa #railfanmeet
Date: Dec 31st 2015.
Location: New York, USA
---------------------------
As I was in New York for the New year eve,...
more... I thought of doing some rail fanning with Acela Express, the USA's fastest train. As soon as I saw some posts from John, I realized that he is back in NY. Pinged him on FB with a little uncertainty about his availability.
John said he is free on 31st Jan and asked if I can meet up. I accomodated myself about 3 hours to spend time with before the new year's eve began. As I was going in manhattan and its very unlikely to come back and take the rest of the family with me again, we all went into the Manhattan at 12:30 pm.
I was scheduled to meet with John at 2 pm at Penn Station (Pennsylvania station), New York. I went into Penn station exactly at 2 pm by then John was already waiting for me at Amtrak Ticket Counters. We exchanged some good wishes and other Rail info and took some pictures of a frame of the old Penn station building and then we thought we can walk down to the Grand Central station. I accepted the thought and we started walking.
It was about a good 30 minutes walk to the Grand central and it was all the way worth it. Its a Two storied underground platform construction with underground link to New York Subway too.
John showed me around all the 100+ tracks and platforms at lower level and upper level and then the whole structure which very was mind blowingly beautiful. As soon as I went into the building, I realized that I saw that somewhere. I could quickly recap and realize that it was the Airport scene in the recent telugu super hit flick, "Subramanyam for sale".
John gifted me some rail magazines, an Emirates back pack and an inflight comfort kit of American Airlines as he worked in those airlines in the past. It was surprising that he was posted at JFK airport when the 9/11 WTC terror struck and was inchanrge of a London bound flight's Onground ops.
John mentioned that he has met so many Rain fans from India including Mani Vijay & Arun Pandian and made several Train trips in India and attended a couple of IRFCA conventions.
He said that it was the first time he was hearing about IRI (Indiarailinfo) and was very happy to know that the site if offering a non profit information service to the fraternity. I thought of gifting an IRI goody to him but as it was planned all of a sudden I didn't have anything with me as everything was in my home in Chicago.
John gifted me some old MTA subway cards which I could use in the night for my family go around.
John accompanied me to the WinterVillage which was about 2 blocks away, where my family was about to come in after their shopping in the city. While there was still some left for their arrival, I and John had a very tasty Cinnamon Apple Cider and sipped in the cold weather of about 2 degrees C. I introduced John to my family especially Chinnu and then took some pictures and bid adieu to John as we continued to go onto Ice Skating at the Winter Village by the Empire state. We later refilled the MTA cards given by John and took ride to Brooklyn by an 5 Express Subway and had the USA's best pizza as the surveys say at Grimaldie's by the Brooklyn Bridge and then took a ride to Port Authority Bus Terminal by a C Subway MTA Train from Brooklyn and changed into an NJ transit bus to reach home.
I was fortunate enough to meet with John as he was supposed to travel to Chile on 31st December 2015, but postponed is due to unavailability of tickets. John went to Chile, South America on 1st January.
