First of all, for me this scene is actually the best of the movie. I think it is really intense and exciting and especially the long waiting time builds much tension. So much for the subjective part.
Like said, the long waiting time is especially to build up tension, so you know what is going on, learn to know the different people walking this nighty station. And with each clock-tick you start to both fear and await more of what's to happen. Now especially the woman with the baby helped again to build up tension, because well, we all love babies, don't we? At least we don't want to see them get into a gun-fight.
On the other hand it showed both Eliot Ness's kindness, when helping the woman, which may also have been a bit of impatience for her to leave the scene. Of course he doesn't just help her and leave his post because he's so nice and loves babies. He just knows that it won't do her and her baby any good to be still around when the bad guys arrive, because they won't let the book-keeper go with him freely.
But I think it also helps to show his single-mindedness/purposefulness on getting the bad guys, when he let's loose the baby carriage and actually pushes the woman away as she wants to grasp the carriage and cries for help, just to get a good shot. This could somehow relate to the church scene earlier, when Malone asks him how far he would go to get Capone. This question is actually a general theme of the whole movie, I think.
And well, a bit of cliché and over-dramatization doesn't hurt, especially in this scene, I think, considering the many Western motives seen in the rest of the movie. By the way there is a nice parody of this scene in The Naked Gun 33 1/3, which especially spoofs the extreme dramatization and suspense of this scene.
EDIT: I found out that this scene is actually an homage to the famous Odessa steps scene in Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, which I myself haven't seen yet.
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