[Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2008 From: Dale and Ev SBC <mailto:gobills_@_ncweb.com> gobills_@_ncweb.com Joe, ...I trust your dressed for the occasion with heavy boots, hard hats, thick pants and "announced" yourselves to avoid interrupting any "commercial" activity. Dale] Dale, you rightfully spotlight potential dangers of any exploration such as this by anyone anywhere, which is why we planned and researched our trips intensively before giving ourselves the green light, including contacting people who have explored its innards with our same profound sense of history and of industrial archeology. It is hard to describe how totally dead the station is. There are no homeless people there: it is too far from any source of food or sustenance. There are no drug dealers there, for the narrow and dark passages of entry and exit and the vulnerable openness around them do not give any sense of safety. Where you might wonder about rats or vermin, there was no sign of life anywhere. The structure's basic soundness was declared as recently as a year or two ago for the production of a movie: the rubble all around belies the strength of the place. The CP Main passes right over the hollows of the mail and express caverns, where massive steel girders abound. The only police presence seems to coincide with the arrival of a CP freight, where the interest here I surmise is looking for people hitching a ride in or out of Canada. We wore strong boots and from research had detailed maps of each floor, with especially detailed maps of the whole dark underbelly. And as a final precaution, we wore HEPA level respirator masks, not trusting what the breeze or our feet would kick up. Sadly, the only sign of life we encountered was on exiting on our final trip. The shouts of a couple of very young people could be heard as they made their way through another part of the station, obvously enjoying hitting everything in sight with some heavy metal object like a large crowbar, true "fun for the feebleminded" with nothing better to do on a Sunday morning. And to make this entry List-legal, let me say how often when I was in the station I wished I had had an opportunity to have boarded that sleeper bound for Hoboken. Joe Braun The Erie Lackawanna Mailing List http://EL-List.railfan.net/ To Unsubscribe: http://Lists.Railfan.net/erielackunsub.html ------------------------------
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