TRAIN BLOG: How it began

To my surprise, there are people who like my train-themed blogs. I like writing them too. I'll post some of them on the weekends, when I'm usually not blogging about news or radio-related things.

NEWSBLOG (WSAU) You wonder how these things begin.

My love of trains begin from inside my crib when I was just a baby.

Our old apartment on Avenue S in Brooklyn wasn't much. We lived on the third floor. Two bedrooms. A large room that was both living room and dining room. An unusually narrow kitchen that ran the entire length of the apartment and had two entryways, an "in" and and "out", like at a restaurant.

My bedroom had been my father's den. It was the den because it was the noisy room, with a window that looked out on the Brighton Beach subway line across the street. The other bedroom, quieter because it butted up against the apartment's hallway, was where my parents slept.

And I was fascinated by the things I saw out my window. The Brighton Line was one of Brooklyn's busiest subways, and during rush hour trains would rattle past my window every few minutes. The D train was the express. They clamored by on the middle two tracks, 10 cars at a time, as they picked up speed from the Kings Highway station two blocks from our house. The M was the local. Usually four or six cars, older, covered with grime and graffiti. They passed by my window with a slower clicky-clack, never able to gather much pace in between their frequent stops. The QB-train run during rush hours only, mornings towards Manhattan, afternoons towards Brooklyn, filled with people coming and going from work.

I'd wake up from my afternoon nap to the subway, thundering by every few minutes. At night, when the trains came only every 20 minutes or so, I'd keep one eye open to see them go by and then drift off to sleep before the next one came. In the morning, I'd wonder which train Daddy was on as he went off to work. And when I went somewhere with mommy, I'd jump and run and get worked up if it involved a subway ride. During the summer, when the windows were open, you knew instinctively to stop talking when the train went by -- you couldn't be heard over it. During the winter, the express kicked up a fascinating swirl of snowflakes when it went speeding by against the afternoon's setting sun.

The subway as a part of the very rhythm of this young boy's life. To this day there's an excitement inside of me when I'm standing on the platform and the train rolls in.

Chris Conley
Operations Manager, Midwest Communications-Wausau
2.6.10