Yesterday I was at work in Melville, NY and a rather large thunder storm rolled through early in the afternoon, I would say around 1pm. 1:30 I get an email from LIRR:
LIRR Service on the Ronkonkoma Br. is temporarily suspended between Deer Park and Ronkonkoma. The service east of Deer Park is suspended because of a power problem that is affecting our signals between Deer Park and Ronkonkoma. We are in the process of establishing bus service to operate between Deer Park and Ronkonkoma. Trains operating west of Deer Park on the Ronkonkoma Branch are currently 30-to-45 minutes late.
Alright, so there I was thinking, “My train is at 4:38, and I am west of Deer Park, so therefore, I am never getting home tonight” I had two options.
- Go to another station on another line (Huntington is close) and pay the extra cab and train fare.
- Go to Farmingdale station and hope the train will show up on time
The Huntington train schedule wasn’t too great, so I thought I would just tough it out at Farmingdale. I get there at 4:15 usually, I’ll just hang out and whatever happens happens.
Before I left work I got this from LIRR:
Train service is has been restored east of Deer Park on the Ronkonkoma Br. with residual eastbound delays of 10-to-15 minutes; and residual westbound delays of 45-to-60 minutes.
So off I went, in the cab ride the taxi driver said the trains were back on schedule. I had a feeling that was a total fabrication, but I went along with it. We show up at the station, there are 2 east-bound trains parked on the other side of the track. Not good. I told Sarah I would be home hopefully by 8:00, I was ready for a 4 hour commute home. I was needless to say a little upset.
Then, out of nowhere, a train shows up. My normal train is 4:38, it was 4:25…what train is this? It was the train before us, the 3:39 train to Penn Station, it was 45 minutes late. OF COURSE! Why didn’t I realize?! The email alerts were telling me the trains were 45 minutes late. So, as it turned out, I showed up at Penn Station at around 5:20, I caught the 5:33 train to secaucus, then the 5:50 train to Park Ridge, I was home at 6:37, about a half hour early!
I got all worked up for nothing…although, if I was 10 minutes late to the station I would have watched that train pull away, then this would have been a much different story =)