Ed,You mean the Philly Fest 01 and Windy City Rail Fest 2003 were your only fests that stuck(mostly) to their schedules? Wow, i thought only the T Party and the Apple Fests were the only ones
What I meant is that the PhillyFest 2001 and Windy City RailFest 2003 events were the only ones in which the local transit agency did not throw us any last-minute curves, such as lines closed due to scheduled or unscheduled trackwork. The two aforementioned Fests went off without such hitches, sticking to the itinerary I had conceived months in advance.
Unfortunately, my failure rate is much greater.At the Boston "T" Party 2002, it was you who brought me the bitter news that the "T" had decided (unannounced until Saturday morning) to do trackwork on the Green Line B route to Boston College.
JerseyFest 2002 last October, we got to Newark Liberty International Airport, and paid the inflated access fee for the monorail, to find it not running and a substitute bus in its place.
At AppleFest 2001 we were supposed to go to Coney Island twice, utilzing the four different routes that meet there (although right now, they don't due to construction). The second pass through Coney Island had us coming in on the N train, and leaving on the inbound F train. The F was truncated back to Kings Highway, so we took the N as far as Kings Highway, and then walked over to the F.
AppleFest 2002 brought us trackwork in the Bronx, with 5 trains not running through between East 180th Street and East 149th Street/Grand Concourse. We had to switch to a 2 train to fill in the gap, and then switch again to another 5. All the extra switching set us back about an hour in our schedule.
AppleFest 2003 seemed like things would go smoothly, until we found out very close to the Fest that the 7 train was not running between Queensboro Plaza and Manhattan. We had to switch to a W train to bridge that gap.
So the only surprise this time was the advance notice we got through the media that things may not be working out as originally planned. At least I won't be surprised when Metro North officially announces it. On the other hand, as I said, we could be among the lucky last ones to ride the Waterbury branch before they close it.