As the train pulls into Manningtree station the conductor announces that there will be a short delay.
As the train pulled away from the station, the conductor asked the light-complected Plessy if he was a "colored man".
Joe Silkie, 43, a graphic artist and trick manufacturer from Hicksville, displayed photographs of a train station, a conductor and a train wreck.
The report into rail industry costs also outlined changes to slash the £5.2bn state subsidy, including phasing out ticket offices in small stations, removing conductors and giving train operators control of maintenance on some routes.
The next train stops at the station and the conductor, Anthony Irby, leans into the microphone.
Several moments later -- as the train was drawing closer to Broad Street station -- the conductor asked a colleague on the public address system: "Rear brake.
The train pulled into Grand Central Station, where the conductor summoned a wheelchair in which the shoeless passenger was taken to the New York, New Haven & Hartford's lost-and-found office.
Until about an hour later, when we pull into my station and the conductor says there has been a suicide on the line just past it.
Here, train operators, conductors, station agents and other employees of the nation's busiest mass transit system, the New York City subway, practice for the worst.
William Finkel, a train service supervisor, was posted at the Whitehall Station to remind conductors and motormen not to stop at Cortlandt Street, as their habit might make them do.
