The original Penn Station occupied two city blocks and featured, according to the New York Preservation Project, “an ornate exterior, arcade, waiting room, concourse and carriage-ways.”
Skeptics of the Berkshire Flyer weekend-only, tourist-oriented concept support instead a daily passenger rail service from New York's Grand Central Terminal via Connecticut and up through the Housatonic Valley to the Berkshires that would include four stations in Berkshire County: Sheffield; Great Barrington; Lee; and the terminus at the Intermodal Transportation Center in Pittsfield.
The service would start out as a pilot program. The plan is to run one round-trip train each weekend during summer and fall weekends between New York City and Pittsfield via the Rensselaer Station, just east across the Hudson River from Albany.
In his letter to the editor, Eddie Sporn of West Stockbridge writes: "That train to Danbury, Connecticut, has left the station and it ain’t coming back."
The Berkshire Flyer, seasonal weekend passenger rail service between New York and Pittsfield, would have free wifi, accessible stations with parking, a café car and a bicycle storage car.
