From our vantage point at Secaucus Station, it appeared that the rail operation was going smoothly. The rotunda was not jammed with people and, as trains from the stadium emptied their loads of fans at Secaucus, they were being directed appropriately to the proper platform and sent to their trains, mostly to Penn Station, New York. There was one mistake that caused some inconvenience: a train to the North Jersey Coast Line was announced for Track 3, but actually left from Track B, on the New York-bound platform. Most passengers had time to make the transfer from one platform to the other, although a few riders missed their train.
We were not in a position to observe the severe bottleneck at the stadium, where thousands of fans were still waiting to board trains that would eventually take them home, or at least to their destinations. None of our members had tickets to the game, and our request to NJT to go to the stadium to observe the departure of the fans was met with the response that there were no trains going there. We were told that the trains coming back from there were being stored on the Meadowlands Rail Link, so they could get to the Meadowlands Station quickly.
The Secaucus operation, which we observed, seemed to go well as midnight approached. We learned this morning, along with everybody else, that the problem was located in a different place.
The NFL and NJT again proved the great sports maxim attributed by baseball great Yogi Berra: “It’s not over til it’s over!”