CTA Tattler

Oops! Missed that switch

It was a Friday afternoon after a long work week, and good karma seemed to be on my side:

• The train arrived just as I reached the platform.
• I found a seat right away.
• The motorman was really motoring north on the Red Line.

These were all good omens for a great start to a fab weekend.

And then we stopped dead north of Wellington. Oh well, I thought, we'll have to wait for the Brown or Purple train at Belmont to pull out of the station since there's only one track at Belmont.

But we wait longer. And then I see another Brown Line train pass us. That makes me realize we're on Track 3, not Track 4.

Then the train lurches backward about 10 feet, and stops dead yet again for a few minutes. Finally, the motorman makes his way to the last car where I'm sitting.

He heads to the motorman compartment and moves the train backward by about 50 feet. That's when it finally dawned on me: he had missed the switch to Track 4. He had to back up so it could be thrown.

Then he walked the length of the train again and proceeded north, switching tracks to make it into Belmont station.

Birthday greeting PS: As a point of personal perogative, here's a birthday shout-out to my brother Dan, designer of this site.