NEW YORK — A trip through New York City’s crowded subway system usually offers a pungent mix of industrial and bodily aromas.

But inside a stretch of the Grand Central station this holiday season, the air smells of vanilla and fresh pine.

The scent is part of a novel advertising campaign for Bath & Body Works, which is pumping the fragrance into the 42nd Street shuttle train platform through November.

Many commuters don’t pause to take notice of the diffusers that have been attached to a steel girder over the platform, and along the walls of a connecting tunnel. Those who look up can see them releasing visible bursts of vapor. Bath & Body Works estimates that 20 to 30 pounds of fragrance will be dispersed by the end of the month, when the campaign ends.

“It smells better than the norma

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