How to fix weekend service on the New Haven

7express wrote:I forgot to mention this as well:
Make Stamford a discharge only Westbound (NY bound) and a stop that receives passengers only Eastbound (New Haven bound).

The train pulls into stamford and the doors are opened to allow the stamford passengers
to discharge. What is your plan to prevent all the nyc bound customers from getting
onto the train? Just because the schedule says discharge only you are naive to think
those standing on the platform will not get on.

Easy, you don't open the entire train. I have worked the 6:02 to Wassaic where White Plains is a receive only stop and the crew only opens one door. They (the passengers) are all trained. This practice has been adopted by the conductors following the retirement of J.J. and is still carried out today.

Fordham is a discharge only for New Haven Line westbound trains and receive only for eastbound trains. Sure, people get on when they shouldn't but after charging them from the last receive stop they won't do it any more. You can pick out the few that get on when they are not supposed to and "educate" them that they are on the wrong train.

As far as receive only stops, they are much easier to handle. As WIllie said, you open one door and collect the tickets as they get on. I worked that train once and you always get a knuckle head on from GCT wanting to go to White Plains. If you can't get the additional fare to Golden's Bridge (the first discharge stop) you open a door at White Plains away from the wayward passenger. The inconvenience of him being forced to go to Golden's Bridge is a deterrent for the next time.

I had an assortment of regular jobs on the New Haven Line back in the days before Metro-North, probably the late 70's and very early 80's when I was not working on the River Line. One job I had was a two round trip job in the afternoon to Stamford and one train involved was a job that made a stop at New Rochelle to receive passengers then next stop was Rye. Apparently we went out to track 2 east of the station and crossed back over to track 4 at Pike for the stop at Rye. The crew used to key one leaf open at New Rochelle to pick up in the head car and we had one passenger who rode many trips and snuck by the crew and bailed off at New Rochelle. The conductor got tired of it so one day when that guy was on the train he had me pull the head car off the platform and picked up the eastbound passengers through a single leaf back in the train. The guy started banging on my cab door but I had it locked and ignored him. We left New Rochelle with him still on the train and he got charged to Rye and the conductor rubbed salt in the wound by calling the WB that we met somewhere east of Rye and tipped off the crew about this guy so he had to pay to get back to New Rochelle and he lost a lot of time as well. Well, you guessed it, he wrote a nasty letter to the company but for once the company backed up the crew and gave the guy little if any satisfaction. The conductor had to give a statement to one of the trainmasters but the trainmaster involved was aware of the circumstances and nothing further was said. I did not hear anything about this and I was very amused by this event, finally somebody stood up to this one. I can't remember just what train numbers were involved at the time but I guess I could look it up, I still have all of the timetables as well as my timebooks for my entire career. I wonder what the management of Metro North would do under these circumstances?
Noel Weaver

GCT Worker wrote:

7express wrote:I forgot to mention this as well:
Make Stamford a discharge only Westbound (NY bound) and a stop that receives passengers only Eastbound (New Haven bound).

The train pulls into stamford and the doors are opened to allow the stamford passengers
to discharge. What is your plan to prevent all the nyc bound customers from getting
onto the train? Just because the schedule says discharge only you are naive to think
those standing on the platform will not get on.

As Willie and Truck says that's easy. Move the New Canaan shuttle over to track 3, have the NY bound train come in on track 5 and only open the doors to the street bound platform.

and after one day other passengers get wise to your brain storm, and will be waiting on street side

DutchRailnut wrote:and after one day other passengers get wise to your brain storm, and will be waiting on street side

That's true, but when they start getting ticketed for zone 17 fares, after a while they may stay on the correct side.