On the platforms outside, commuters now wait for trains beneath new wooden and metal canopies, painted to match the station's beige and green scheme.
Outside, commuters poured up and down the stairs of the dreaded G-train station at Greenpoint Avenue, one of just two underground hubs in this one-line, two-stop neighborhood where access to Manhattan via subway includes a mandatory transfer in Queens.
A generation ago, the town's rocky, wooded countryside was outside the commuter belt; now many summer houses in and around Gustavsberg are being used throughout the year, often after major improvements.
In a sign of the obstacles facing any new effort, a suicide bomber set off a device early this morning outside a commuter train station in the Israeli town of Kfar Saba.
NSB took delivery of 49 units until 1952, although they were also used outside the commuter rail network.
Dozens of clean-burning buses line up outside La Bourget commuter train station in northern Paris ready to shuttle visitors to the conference center hosting the UN climate talks.
I wondered whether that sounded British or American to the ears of commuters outside King's Cross station.
The vendors who sell steaming hot humitas and warm, cinnamon-scented horchata to morning commuters outside the subway are the 21st-century equivalent of the Italian fruit peddlers: Thanks to them, we're eating more varied food.
Outside that boundary, commuters had more than the usual tie-ups to complain about, but the inconvenience, and whatever horn-honking resulted from it, was blessedly underreported to the national viewing audience.
But on Tuesday, Mr. Spitzer, who is the unlikely front-runner in this year's race for city comptroller, received a mostly friendly reception as he ventured to Jackson Heights, Queens, where he spoke with commuters outside a subway station.
"It's almost 6 o'clock now," said John Williams, an Amtrak police officer, who was hard at work clearing the sidewalk outside Penn Station of commuters trying to get home after work.
