Jump to content

New York’s Oldest Subway Cars, Beautiful Symbols of a Sad Decline

IntExp

By IntExp,
in New York City Subway

Recommended Posts

IntExp

IntExp

Posted
Posted

 Rather wonderfully bittersweet ode to the R32's in The New Yorker.

By Alexander Aciman

 

In 1964, the New York City Transit Authority introduced the shiny, stainless-steel R32 subway car. “There was a very special inaugural trip that took place on today’s Metro-North line into Grand Central Terminal, welcoming the trains into New York,” James Giovan, an educator at the New York Transit Museum, told me recently. The R32s were dubbed Brightliners. By 1965, six hundred had been built. With their brilliant corrugated bodies, they bore little resemblance to other cars. They were praised for having the clearest intercom system. Their plastic benches marked the end of gritty rattan-wicker seats. The R32 was the train of the future, offering a vision of what mass transit would look like in fifty years—literally, as it happens, because, against all odds, roughly two hundred of the original R32s still operate on New York City’s C, J, and Z lines. They are the oldest subway cars still in service in the city, and among the oldest still operating in the world.

 

Amid a year of perpetual delays, terrifying derailments, power blackouts that have left riders stranded underground and between stations for hours at a time, service changes so counterintuitive and so alien that they could have been devised by Kafka or M. C. Escher—not to mention the century-old tile peeling from the station walls, the mystery stalagmites and stalactites, the rusted support beams, the countdown clocks that seem to operate beyond the boundaries of time and space—the R32, once a forward-looking beacon for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (which absorbed the New York City Transit Authority, in 1968), is now a symbol of its failure to update its technology and infrastructure. Many of the R32 cars have trouble maintaining their air-conditioning for the duration of their trips; they are usually switched out for newer cars during the summer months. Today, the mean distance between R32 failures is thirty-three thousand miles, meaning that they happen for those cars about thirteen times as often as they do for the newer R188 cars, which can go four hundred and thirty-six thousand miles without a mechanical failure. The C line has been ranked the worst in the system by the Straphangers Campaign more often than any other subway line, a feat owed, in no small part, to the ancient cars that service it. Those frequent failures can create delays that ripple throughout the subway system.

 

In July of 2011, the M.T.A. published a preliminary budget for the next three years, noting that the R32 cars were “already well past the standard expected useful life of 40 years.” However, “structural defects” had led to the “accelerated retirement of R44 cars,” and so the R32 would have to stay in service, the report explained, until at least 2017. Barring any further delays, the cars are now expected to stay in service until 2019. In the meantime, extended construction on the L train’s Canarsie tube will entail increased service on the nearby lines, a task that will partially fall to the R32s. That they are still in use at all is emblematic of the way the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has long operated: underfunded and saddled with the lofty task of carrying the entire city without pause, the M.T.A., by necessity, stretches everything long past its expiration date. According to a 2012 survey of the system, ninety per cent of the city’s stations have architectural or structural flaws. Knowledgeable observers have offered repair and upgrade timelines that stretch over half-century increments. Costly patch jobs required to keep the old cars running further deplete funds that should be allocated to the primary culprit in subway delays: the signal system—the central nervous system of the M.T.A., responsible for controlling the movement of trains. That system is still made up, for the most part, of prewar technology. The difficulty of securing funding and of scheduling repairs has helped keep it in place, along with the fact that the only way to update it would be through long service interruptions, which people hate. And so delays have become routine, and the necessary repairs have become lengthier to complete and more expensive than they might have been twenty-five years ago—when, according to the Times, the city first brought up the need to update the signal system.

 

That the R32s have endured through all this tells another story: they are genuinely a marvel of mid-twentieth-century engineering. They were based on a 1949 prototype by the Budd Company, in Pennsylvania, for a car called the R11, which was intended for a proposed Second Avenue subway line, the M.T.A.’s greatest and most famous delay. The Budd Company’s decision to build the new cars from stainless steel meant that each would be four thousand pounds lighter than its predecessor. And, even today, the R32s are more pleasant to ride, when they’re working, than the newer R160 cars that replace them during the summer. Their lights are a duller, softer white than those in the newer cars. Poles are located in the middle of the car, rather than jutting out from the seats, as they do in some later models. The R32 cars are the same width as those replacing them, yet they feel wider, more open. And there is no high-pitched dubstep squeal as an R32 leaves the station.

 

The Budd Company filed for bankruptcy in 2014, meaning that the R32s have not only outlasted their intended period of service but have outlasted their manufacturer. They have lived through eight mayoral appointments and ten Presidents. They are essentially your grandmother’s Volvo from the sixties, if that Volvo had millions of miles on its odometer and was responsible for getting your entire family to and from work, and if Volvo had gone out of business several years ago.

 

The R32 is, not surprisingly, a favorite of train nerds, as well as of subway professionals. All of the subsequent New York City subway cars—including the glitzy R179s slated to replace the R32s—owe much to their design. “When that car was brand-new, nothing before looked like that,” Giovan said. “But almost every car after it resembles it in some way.” And so, when the new trains of the future finally—finally—arrive, we’ll see glimmering steel machines with bright headlights, the direct descendants of a machine that lasted much longer than it ever should have been asked to.

 

  • Alexander Aciman is a writer in New York.

 

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-beautiful-symbols-of-the-new-york-subways-sad-decline?mbid=social_facebook

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interested Rider

Interested Rider

Posted
Posted

I have to admit that I am quite partisan when it comes to the R/32's as even though I have rode everything from the Q types and the Flivers to what is running now, I always have had a soft spot for the R'32's. I was in my junior year in High School when they arrived on the Southern Division and remembered seeing the standards and the Triplexes that were being replaced on flat trucks cut up on their way to subway heaven. i never thought that the R/32's would be a worthy successor ,to those great cars and boy was i wrong!. If there was ever a series of cars that became synonymous with good service for many years, it was these cars. When they returned to the N Line and the Q Line for a brief time many years ago, I would smile when I was fortunate to be riding an R/32. On those lines which the R/32's called home for many years, they ran like they owned the line as they did years before they went onto other lines. They are now in their  mid 50's something that their steel  predecessors never were able to reach before they went to /subway heaven and that is an achievement in itself. When the last of the R/32's are retired,  another bit of New York City History will disappear as the ability to look out the front window which was enjoyed by many generations both young and old  will no longer be available.and that will be sorely missed along with the cars.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Interested Rider

Interested Rider

Posted
Posted

The blessing of the R/32's (and for that matter all cars through the R/42) was that front window where many of us who rode the subway became interested in the entire subject of transit. You are able to look straight and see everything to your right, left and in the middle at the same time and not only one person could look out (although there were times when one person would hog the entire space) but families with young children could look out together at the same time. Yes it is time for the R/32's to go to subway heaven and to join many of us in retirement.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
S78 via Hylan

S78 via Hylan

Posted
Posted

Just think how many future generation railfans will be deprived of the ability to look out of a front window line many of us were able to do for many years. Other than the trips sponsored by the Transit Museum, there will be no other times that it could be done.

Times change. We have to live with it.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Union Tpke

Union Tpke

Posted
Posted

OPTI...

 

What does that mean?

Just think how many future generation railfans will be deprived of the ability to look out of a front window line many of us were able to do for many years. Other than the trips sponsored by the Transit Museum, there will be no other times that it could be done. 

 

Sadly, our only hope for RFWs might be automation.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
trainfan22

trainfan22

Posted
Posted

Sadly, when the Red birds retired, I was only a baby at that time

 

Sent from my SM-G386T using Tapatalk

I saw you upvoted ATH post saying good riddance to the 32s, If you don't like the 32s then you probably wouldn't have liked the Redbirds as they were very similar from a rider's prospective.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
LGA Link N Train

LGA Link N Train

Posted
Posted

I saw you upvoted ATH post saying good riddance to the 32s, If you don't like the 32s then you probably wouldn't have liked the Redbirds as they were very similar from a rider's prospective.

A. The R32's are lit and I respect them for being the oldest yet continuasly operating fleet in the world

B. The Red birds retired at about 11-12 months after I was born so I don't remember riding them at all. The only personal memory of Redbird's that I can get has to come from an older family members of mine (specificly my parents since they moved into NY in the 90's and 2000)

 

Sent from my SM-G386T using Tapatalk

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.

  I accept