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By Lorna M.
We have taken all three of our cars here for years, and Pine Hill is the reason that they are all still on the road. They offer great repairs for our older cars and have advised us on ways to keep them as long as possible.
We have had them take care of everything here from oil changes, to brakes, to tires and batteries. They are honest and give good advice about what repairs are necessary for safety, longevity and what can wait to be done.
They also make it very convenient by allowing you to drop off and pick up cars after hours and handling all contact over the telephone.
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By Joe G.
Penn Station is a mess.
Arriving at Penn Station after a full day's trip across Pennsylvania, we hit it at about rush hour, which probably didn't help. Kids and luggage in tow, we found an elevator to take us up from the train. Unable to find anything resembling a map, we proceeded to follow the very infrequent handicapped signage to reach an elevator that was down a few unlikely looking corridors, and eventually wound up on the street. Followed a sign that claimed to be to the taxi stand, but in fact ended up walking two sides of the station to reach where taxis were actually picking up passengers. Without a doubt, one of the poorest and most confusing arrangements for signage and passenger movement that I can imagine. I expect it would have been a bit better had we been able to use the escalators, but still.
One of the remarkable things is the paranoia that exists around having any sort of map of Penn. Can't find one online. This just serves to annoy the public. Surely, given the number of clearly homeless people and regular commuters who are walking through the facility on a daily basis, it would be trivial for a bad guy to construct an accurate map for only a few hours effort, and what that means is that everyone else suffers, but the bad guys don't. Just put up a map, for heaven's sake. It doesn't have to be super detailed or to scale, it would just be nice to know generally what you're walking into. Chicago Union Station provides brochures with a map, and you can download it from their website.
I rate Penn a zero out of five on arrival.
Departure? A bit better. Part of that is because we arrived early, and as first class Amtrak passengers, we had access to the Acela Lounge, so we didn't experience any of the famed Penn Station restrooms. In fact, we had enough time to wander around and explore fairly extensively, and I can say, the place is massive. It also became clear that we had suffered a fairly worst-case scenario upon arrival, but my criticisms of the signage and lack of maps are well-justified. We did eventually find a few posted directories that included a map, and then the layout became a whole lot more understandable.
We had enough time to go outside and walk a bit, and we found the train yard to the west, a block-sized area recessed in the ground, hard to get a good view of, but you can see how the AP(?) building is built over the yard. Very impressive, you can kind of see it from the parking lots to the north and south.
Penn Station is a disappointment, though. This is one place where it seems like the grand old stations of yesteryear would make sense, and they actually tore down the historical Penn Station and left just the underground portions. Bad idea! Across town, Grand Central was very impressive and it *looked* functional (we visited but took no trains).
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By Jenny K.
Penn Station is a huge, old, lovely train station in between the Mount Vernon and Station North neighborhoods. They offer service to DC and point in between on the MARC commuter line. Amtrak from here leads as far north as Boston and Vermont and south to North Carolina and even New Orleans. Light rail and bus stops take you to other places in Baltimore. There's a small coffee shop, a news/snacks shop, and a small, kind of dingy-looking restaurant. Architecture is gorgeous, train service can be dodgy--but that's Amtrak/MARC's fault, not the station's.
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