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Commuters crossing the rebuilt LIRR concourse at Penn Station have spent the past few years doing something that used to be unthinkable down there: looking up. The corridor is nearly twice as wide as it was and the ceilings, once low enough to graze a tall man's hair, now reach 18 feet. But the most satisfying sight sits at eye level, tucked behind the escalator to Seventh Avenue and 33rd Street, a few steps from Tracks 18 and 19. Tracks, the raw bar that poured Guinness for the 6:27 crowd for 16 years, is finally open again.
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Bruce Caulfield debuted the bar back in January of 2003, in the old McCann's space he won at bid the year before, after running a coffee shop in the station for 13 years. In 2019, the MTA's concourse overhaul evicted it along with nine other businesses, and the last pint was poured on August 31 of that year. Caulfield moved above ground to 220 West 31st Street, across from Madison Square Garden, and never stopped saying he'd be back. The bar soft-opened in its old station corner on August 8, and on September 17 a priest from St. Francis of Assisi blessed the taps while MTA chair Janno Lieber raised a pint.
"I don't believe in coincidences, and I always said I'm coming back," Caulfield says. His original partners didn't follow him. "They said they didn't want to go through the expense and I think just the aggravation of building a new space and all the bureaucracy. And I said was ‘Well, I'm doing it.’" So he found new backers for his revamped station bar while the 31st Street spot now belongs to his former partners, the O'Brien brothers, as O'Brien's, a sports bar.
The $3 million redesign of Tracks is visible upon entry: gorgeous woodwork, real lighting and a bar that's a little shorter than before anchor the space. Then there’s the railroad memorabilia, which now takes up an entire wall. "I'm a train geek," he says, which you'd have guessed.
The raw bar has added sushi ("People eat more sushi than oysters now") and the burgers come from Pete, the original butcher, who still grinds everything in a small shop. There are Kobe sliders for people who want something lighter while the steak, potato and vegetable dinners of 2003 have given way to French dips and steak frites. Caulfield says he has the largest Irish whiskey collection in the city and he's set up a friendly Irish coffee rivalry with the bar Irish Exit. Most of his staff is Irish-born or Irish American ("not required, but that's the world I travel in"), and nearly every bartender has managed or run a bar of their own. "They're not doing this part time,” he says. “This is their profession."
What's changed most is the week itself. Fridays are noticeably quieter, and Caulfield has made his peace with it: "I don't think the five-day work week will ever come back." Still, Tracks has never depended on tourists. "It's a commuter bar," he says, for LIRR and New Jersey Transit riders, with construction crews as "really my backbone, because they work six days a week." It was always a melting pot, he says, with the union guys at 6 and the white-collar workers blending beautifully, and he means to get that back. It's still a Rangers bar, too. And when Metro-North's New Haven Line starts running into Penn, which the MTA expects in 2027, a whole new set of regulars will hopefully arrive.
There's a second Tracks now, too. It opened in Grand Central Madison in September 2025, the first restaurant in the LIRR's East Side terminal. There's no venting, so the kitchen relies on ventless ovens and a short menu. "I basically took over a waiting room," Caulfield says. "It's like drinking in an airport bar." It does its best food business during train delays. Penn, he says, is "more of a restaurant. It's cozier."
Next up, maybe, is Philadelphia's 30th Street Station, where he's been invited to open, followed by Washington's Union Station. "My wife thinks I'm crazy, but this is what I love," he says. "I'm looking at Philly right now, but let me catch my breath."
With the federal government's own plans for Penn still taking shape, he may not get long. Then again, he's already outlasted one rebuild.