Baby On Board: Babies Born In Train Stations

Last week, the hashtag #MetroBaby was trending after a Washington, D.C. woman gave birth to a baby boy on a Metro platform. Despite many humorous suggestions for the baby’s name (my favorites: Stan Clear and Doris Closing), Amir Mason was born a few weeks early and delivered safely.

Yesterday, New York got its own Metro Baby when police helped deliver a baby boy in Penn Station. On her way home from a doctor’s appointment and waiting for a Long Island Rail Road train, the mother was overcome with labor pains and taken to the police station office inside the train station. Paramedics from St. Luke’s Hospital were on hand to deliver baby Oscar, and assisting MTA Officer Melissa DeFrancsco noted, “It was awesome.”

The D.C. Metro baby got a train-themed gift basket and $100 transit card from the agency. The New York MTA is presumably still picking out a card.

Are train station babies a new trend? What station is likely to be next? I’d vote for somewhere like London‘s airy and renovated St. Pancras station, with plenty of restaurants and shops, a luxury hotel, and an easy hop to Paris by Eurostar.

World War II Bomb Closes Berlin Rail Station


Berlin commuters got an unwelcome reminder of their city’s wartime past today when a bomb from World War II was discovered near the city’s main railway station.

The Hauptbahnhof was closed for several hours as bomb disposal experts dealt with the device, the BBC reports. Flights to and from Tegel airport were diverted.

The device was a 220-pound Soviet bomb and was discovered at a building site a mile north of the train station. While this may seem to be too far away to cause concern to those using the station, German bomb disposal experts are extra careful, especially after three of their number were killed while attempting to defuse a wartime bomb in Gottingen in 2010.

The bomb has now been defused and taken away. All transport has resumed.

Berlin was hit hard in World War II. As you can see from this image taken by the British army shortly after the war, the city was pretty much leveled. Nearly half a million tons of ordnance was dumped on the city and an estimated one in eight bombs didn’t go off. While most explosive devices were cleaned up in the months after the war, they’re still being uncovered on a regular basis.

Germany isn’t the only country that has to worry about wartime ordnance. In 2001, workers found a World War II grenade near Gatwick Airport in England.

Last year the BBC published an interesting interview with a German bomb disposal expert.

[Photo courtesy No 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit, Wilkes A (Sergeant)]

Photo Of The Day: Southern Cross Station

Train stations around the world all have their own personality. Often, they are great works of architecture. This photo from pkorsmok gives a different view of the lines and design of Southern Cross Station in Melbourne, Australia, capturing a quiet moment in a station that serves over 40,000 passengers a day.

Makes you want to get on a train, doesn’t it?

Have your own great travel photos? Submit them to the Gadling Flickr pool for a chance to be featured on Photo of the Day.

[Photo Credit: pkorsmok]

Photo Of The Day: St. Pancras

It’s five years this month since the Eurostar began its run from the renovated St. Pancras train station. The station remains a tour-de-force of a hub. This may be the only train station in the UK that feels truly European, and not only because it connects to the European train grid. St. Pancras is densely useable and grand, with a real buzz – like a train station of yesteryear, the sort of place you might have read about as a child. Flickr user nan palmero captures some of the station’s buzz in the above image.

Upload your best images to the Gadling Group Pool on Flickr. We choose our favorites from the pool to be Photos of the Day.

[Image: nan palmero | Flickr]

Denver’s Union Station undergoing LEED Gold makeover

The historic Union Station in Denver, Colorado, will soon be undergoing a major restoration project that will turn it into one of the most progressive transportation hubs in the United States.

According to Inhabitat, the project is aiming for LEED Gold certification and will preserve the train hub that connects the Amtrak system with regional modes of transport, like Colorado’s celebrated FasTracks light rail system and local bus lines. The restoration will also include the addition of a 130-room Oxford Hotel-affiliated boutique hotel, a retail center, and six public plazas.

The new Union Station is projected to bolster the reputation of Denver’s LoDo (Lower Downtown) District as a model for urban revitalization. Short for Lower Downtown, LoDo was the first settlement in the greater Denver area and is now one of the most happening parts of the city, with breweries, cafes, galleries, and creative businesses taking over the district’s Victorian and turn-of-the-century buildings. The new Union Station is scheduled to be completed in 2014.

[via Inhabitat; Flickr image via Cliff]