Rainy Monday Morning Commute

It is Monday. I guess the nice weather had to end sooner or later. And I supposed we need the rain.

This morning's commute was fine. I took the P508 in. The train was packed and we crawled through Ashland. But we must have made up time somewhere along the line as we arrived to South Station at 8:21 a.m.

So I read this article about "Who Taught You To Drive" and I thought it was appropriate enough to include on Train Stopping. It ran in yesterday's Sunday Boston Globe. The article is about a worst-case driving scenario - having your car stall out on the train tracks while an incoming train is approaching.

Some interesting tidbits were included in the article. Did you know that a million cars traverse railroad tracks in Massachusetts every day? I didn't - that's some interesting trivia.

If you didn't already know this, should your car stall on train tracks when a train is coming, remember these simple two steps:

1) Get out of the vehicle and get as far away from the tracks as you can. Try to signal the conductor from a safe distance.

2) To avoid being hit by debris, run in the direction the train is coming from.

Also, instead of calling the police from your mobile phone, make a call from the silver box that makes the crossing arms go up and down. The phone in this box goes to a train dispatcher.

In other news, The Herald News published a timeline yesterday of the history of the long-debated South Coast commuter rail line extension. This project has been in the discussion stages since 1991. That's a long history.