The plan to restore the beauty and elegance of the old Pennsylvania Station is on a fast track. And the widow of the man who inspired this project hopes that, after many snags and controversies over the last 15 years, the project will be built.

The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan had a dream to convert the old Farley Post Office on Eighth Avenue into a new Penn Station. Moynihan, a scholar, an intellectual and a man who never shirked a fight for a good cause, deplored the fact that the old Penn Station had been destroyed to make way for Madison Square Garden. Whenever he recalled how the wrecker's ball had destroyed the beautiful facade of the old Penn Station, it made him angry.

Moynihan was a dreamer, but his dreams were based on thoughtful consideration of what was wrong with the world. Much of his world was in New York. He grew up in an impoverished family in Hell's Kitchen on Manhattan's West Side. As a boy he sold newspapers and shined shoes in the old Penn Station. Throughout his career, he seethed at injustice, and to him it was a great injustice to see an architectural masterpiece of marble and granite destroyed.

It took three years for the wrecker's ball to reduce the Doric columns and sculpted angels of Penn Station to rubble. The remains were dumped into a New Jersey swamp. Ada Huxtable wrote indignantly in the New York Times: "Tossed into the Secaucus graveyard are about 25 centuries of classical culture and the standards of style, elegance and grandeur that it gave to the dreams and constructions of Western man."

Moynihan also deplored the seeming inability of New York to undertake grand projects. But now, after many stops and starts, the future of the station that will be named after the late senator seems assured. His widow, Liz Moynihan, told me: ''If it doesn't happen now, it never will. This is the best chance we'll ever have to rebuild the West Side."

Liz Moynihan and others who share the senator's vision think the Penn Station project will be a catalyst for other development.

In the next few weeks, two of the city's largest developers will submit plans for rebuilding the station, moving Madison Square Garden and erecting two skyscrapers at the site of the present station. One of these structures would be taller than the Empire State Building. The estimated cost, including rebuilding the station and creating new structures on adjacent blocks, would be $14 billion. Under the plan, the new station, inside the Farley Post Office, would include a street-level waiting room under a glass ceiling. Sunlight would bathe the concourse two levels down. And Madison Square Garden, it's hoped, would move to a new arena to be constructed on the western side of the Farley building.

Patrick Foye, co-chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, told the Times: "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I think the stars are aligned to do this."

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg are strongly behind this plan -- and, in celestial terms, they are two key stars that need to be aligned. But there are a few other problems that may hold things up. The developers have some reservations, but it appears that ultimately they'll go along with the grand plan. Also, some of the civic groups that deal with major changes in New York's landscape have been nitpicking on some minor details.

But it's time to brush aside all the naysayers and nitpickers. It's been 44 years since this architectural homicide took place.

Maura Moynihan, the late senator's strong-willed daughter, has waged a one-woman lobbying campaign for four years to get the project moving. She's optimistic.

"Were my father alive today,'' she said, "I know that he would champion this new plan and he would bring together the developers, preservationists and leaders to make it work. ... Let us not waste any more time because we have no time to waste."