A Thing That Makes Me Sad

At Penn Station, the sign no longer goes clackety-clack

It’s a whole lot quieter in Penn Station these days – no whirring sounds, no clickety-clack of an old-fashioned, mechanical signboard bringing the news that your train is 20 minutes late.

In place of the iconic board above the main desk at Baltimore’s Amtrak station, there now hangs a large digital board that works intermittently as it undergoes testing. For live information, passengers depend on two small temporary digital screens – miniature versions of what travelers might see listing arrivals and departures at an airport.

That sign was one of my favorite things about the train station.