I will admit that sometimes my anxiety does get the best of me. Sometimes I think the creepy people on the T are really going to get me.

But today on the MBTA Red Line, I sincerely believe I had every right to be legitimately worried as my Braintree train went from South Station to Broadway.

Why is that? Because I’m fairly certain the T may have caught fire. Or something.

Now I might just be paranoid, but as my train went from South Station through the tunnel to Broadway, it smelled strongly of smoke. Of course, I’m looking around for flames and such, thinking it might just be a T creeper being a pyromaniac, but when we pull into Broadway, I’m not the only one nervous: riders at the other end of the car were getting off and it looked smokier down there.

As the train was standing by for a minute or so in the station, I watched as the other side of the platform filled with people all debarking their Outbound train. Now I’m honestly thinking something is going on and am expecting to have to get off the T too, but of course, no MBTA officials say anything at all. A woman poked her head out of the train and reported back that the smokiness was only outside the train. So I think that means my train just went through whatever fire, smokescreen, etc. it was in the tunnel. Way to go.

But of course, I’ll never know the full story because not only did the subway just carry on like normal (although we stood by again at JFK for a few minutes), but the MBTA website Service Alerts only lists one Red Line alert:

Red Line is experiencing a 15-20 minute delay between Alewife and Park street southbound due to an earlier disable train. 11/18/2009 3:15 PM

I’m not sure if this had anything to do with my experience, since mine happened about an hour before this alert, but still, the MBTA needs to be better at communicating possible problems on their rails for the sake of already paranoid riders who are jaded by past horror stories of fires on the T.

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