London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

Grand Central in the Good Old Days

“Give me rail travel, trans-Atlantic liners, and electric cars and you will have Taki on your side,” writes our favorite Greek philosopher over on his online magazine. The invocation of rail transportation prompted one reader, Mr. Roland Maruska, to send in his response to Taki’s call:

As a long ago employee of the late, great New York Central System, I am cheering your words, and I hope the late Alfred Perlman is beating his breast in shame somewhere for presiding over the disastrous 1968 merger with the Pennsy. The Central’s previous president, Robert Young, committed suicide in 1958 when he fully realized what Dwight Eisenhower and the oil companies had done to his beloved industry. Give him his due, Perlman was an innovator. The gravity-powered Selkirk, NY yard with its computerized switching and speed retarders was his brainchild, as was containerized shipping (called piggie back), although ahead of its time, but in the end he sold out to the Pennsy, which proceeded to loot Commodore Vanderbilt’s empire. In the Gilded Age, men like the Astors and Vanderbilts, and Carnegie and Frick, duked it out by playing oneupmanship with their opulent homes, magnificent transportation palaces and office buildings. Penn Station, for example, built by the Astors as an affront to the Vanderbilts, was designed to last more than 800 years before it would need significant structural repairs. Today our corporate “giants” hide in their ugly, chintzy skyscrapers and send real men and women of the working class to their deaths in countries they themselves avoid like the plague. If and when it is ever built, will the Cheney Building last a decade before it is condemned and razed for being structurally weak and aesthetically challenged?

I worked in the Central’s General Claims Attorney’s office at 466 Lexington Avenue in 1967 and 1968 and had enormous respect for my boss, Mr. J.T. Lynch, a fine man and World War II veteran. I learned first hand about sleazy lawyers and outrageous lawsuits, my favorite being the one brought by a woman who tried to commit suicide by jumping off a moving train, then, having failed, sued the railroad for not keeping the coach doors locked.

After work on Friday nights it was off to The Cattleman with friends for a small glass of brandy on the house (if one had to wait too long to be seated), a steak, and last a cigar, again on the house, then to the Railroad Enthusiasts club, which had its own room in Grand Central Terminal, in perpetuity due to the generosity of the railroad. Later some of us would head over to the Oyster Bar for a late night cocktail and hors d’oeuvres ( I hope I didn’t shock Taki with that one.), the latter courtesy of the excellent manager Mr. Drummond.

Ah, memories.

Previously: Grand Central Station at Night

Published at 7:12 pm on Monday 7 January 2008. Categories: New York.
Comments

Have you seen the PBS Special on Grand Central? It is very interesting!

Matt

— Matthew Cusack 14 Feb 2008 1:18 pm
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