Mind Your Children In And Around The Gap

If London is the New New York*, I hope they don’t start using that schoolmarmy “Mind the Gap” announcement:

Brittany Walker from Jackson, Miss., is small in stature but big on luck.

Less than an hour after she arrived in Manhattan with her family after a two-day bus trip from Mississippi, the shy 4-year-old fell into a gap between a train and a platform in Penn Station and landed on a track just inches from the deadly third rail.

The lucky part is she got out with just a few bruises and a single scratch on her right arm.

Brittany’s big scare on the Long Island Rail Road’s Track 18 played out yesterday before hundreds of rush-hour commuters, who froze with alarm as Brittany screamed “Mommy” from the dark below and her mother shrieked for help.

“My little girl was just laying down there and I couldn’t do anything,” said the mom, Terrian Walker, 28. “I was terrified. I was in total shock.”

. . .

Walker said two of her kids and six pieces of luggage already were on the 4:31 p.m. train to Long Island when she started toward the platform edge, lugging a suitcase with Brittany in front of her and her 7-year-old daughter behind.

Suddenly, the 3-foot-10, 25-pound Brittany disappeared into the gap between the train and the platform, which ranges from about 7 to 10 inches at that point.

Family friend Walter Casey, who was escorting the family to Huntington, said he immediately stretched out on the platform and stuck his arm into the gap.

“You could barely see her, but you could hear her. She was crying and yelling for her mother. I was reaching down and she was reaching up and then there was a spark.”

The 28-year-old sanitation worker from Huntington said a bolt of electricity “went through my left arm and it went numb so I had to pull back.”

He and Walker were still trying to get to the terrified tyke when police arrived, had the power cut, and, with the help of a bystander, got Brittany out about 15 minutes later.

*An odd evergreen, but a nice way to transition out of the Labor Day weekend:

It’s a city of nearly 8 million where Mayor Bloomberg owns a townhouse. Paul McCartney, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Madonna all own homes here, too. It competed to host the 2012 Olympic Games. Architects Daniel Libeskind, Norman Foster, and Richard Rogers are all working here or have recently completed buildings. Rupert Murdoch owns a big, conservative, tabloid newspaper here. The art scene is sizzling, real estate is super-pricey, and sushi-lovers can choose from at least two Nobu restaurants. The business world revolves around a big stock market and lots of new hedge funds.

The list of parallels between New York and London has always been long, but lately, with booming economies in both cities and trendy restaurants moving into old industrial neighborhoods, the two are looking more like mirror images.