January 26, 2013 at 9:53pm
"Is the M running?" That is the question of the moment, Friday night at Essex Street, the ancient underground portal to Williamsburg. The service change board shows no scheduled issues for the M, but at least two J's have already gone by. A woman uses her phone to check the MTA website - nothing there. A guy yells across two tracks to the station agent, and I catch the first three words of the reply: "Where ya going?". Ooh, that's a bad sign. "What he say?" "Says he just came on duty."
We know it's going to be freezing, but the consensus among our ad hoc group is that we take the next J to Myrtle Avenue, an elevated station, where the M line branches off.
The platform at Myrtle Ave. is packed with people waiting on the middle track for an M. What's up? The J conductor mumbles something about "broken rail," and then slides out sideways into the darkness. A guy says to me, "Did you hear him? What's THAT supposed to mean?" I respond, "Can't be too bad. These people seem to know what's going on." Then I notice the inch of snow on the rails. There hasn't been a train in hours, WTF? I gotta go check with the station agent.
Below, the heated waiting area is packed with "ladies-and-gentlemen," and churning with impatience. A woman blurts out, in broken Chinese immigrant English, that the station agents are looking into the situation. Yeah, I can see them on the phones. Just then, we hear "thump-THUMP, thump-THUMP," and through a gap in the structure, we see a train creeping in on the middle track. "POW," it releases its air. Explanation no longer required. Check the clock. We've been waiting so long, they've started running the late night shuttle. Everyone files upstairs to wait in the warm train. The 45 minute trip is turning into 2 hours - but after the shuttle pulls out, most of them will be home in 15 minutes.
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