R10 2952

Considering all the problems with these cars, it's devolved into a farce honestly. Someone should creating a "Shocking Interview with Bombardier Inspector" vid...

Looking back on the Pullman/Rockwell fiasco of the late '70s, the R32/42s may well end up becoming this decade's R16s- pressed back into service because the 'train of the future' turns out to be a lemon. Then again, I wouldn't put it past Cuomo to prevent the old cars from returning even if the R179 situation became truly dire, him being the optics-obsessed egomaniac that he is (and always was)...

Pretty much...

Lack of door controls in the motorman's cab. As a result, only the blind ends could be used by the conductor. This was a problem with the R40Ms and R42s as well. The MTA didn't want to move the in-station conductor boards from the 4-4 position to the 5-3 position; ultimately, having the 8-car trains stop at the 10-car marker became an issue due to the trains being off-center and passengers running, so the cars were shifted to the instead after a few weeks. This is also why the 5-3 setup was used when the R40/42s ran on the Eastern Division. Looking back in retrospect, it never made much sense to me- would probably have been easier if they had just assigned the R32/38s to ENY for the 4-4 setup and sent the R40/42s to run on 10-car lines...

Time to go way back... System: New York City Transit Line: 3rd Avenue El Location: City Hall Collection of: Frank Pfuhler Looking at this photo from the early '40s, I'm actually amazed it never occurred to the BMT or IRT folks to tie the Brooklyn Bridge Line into the City Hall Spur; it would have been like Chrystie Street before Chrystie Street. The IRT and BMT el cars all had the same width and similar length (except for the C-types). Would have made more sense than that plan to tie the Brooklyn Bridge el into the Nassau Street subway, anyway.

The weird thing is I don't even remember seeing Redbirds on the . I've seen several photos of R33s on the Jerome Line in the late '90s, but I'm guessing there weren't too many of them, because whenever I took the back then it was always R62s. Another unicorn was the R62A train- heard of it, never saw it...

Ford Crown Victoria

Because they've always had a schizophrenic approach to theses type of minor modifications. In the late '80s, A Division cars going through GOH kept their original number plates, while the B Division cars had theirs replaced. In the early '90s, some Redbirds had their old drop-sash windows replaced with small louvres, but some cars kept the old ones. Same thing with rollsign cranks in the mid '90s- some cars had them replaced with hex keys, others kept the handcranks until well into the 2000s. The small windows on certain cars- some R32s and R38s had the louvres screwed shut, others kept them usable. The R62As had their small windows screwed shut in the early 2000s, while the R62s didn't get those adjusted until about a decade later. Half-assed small fix-it projects that linger in purgatory for x amount of years are par for the course with this agency....

The transit experts should hold their own conference and tell people to "forget Cuomo". Then escalate the dispute to the appropriate medium if need be; WWE or whatever...

Post of the year. Even before the current situation, the general public and the media were paying way too much attention to Trump's wrongdoings, without paying noticeable mind to Cuomo's or deBlasio's shit. The proverbial swamp is not just in D.C. after all. Maybe if all these citizens had been sufficiently involved in the civic process, we wouldn't be stuck in this trifecta of federal, state and municipal malaise. Unfortunately, Byford is not the first person to have been shot out of a cannon by the Albany circus clowns. Same thing happened to Howard Roberts when he was president of NYCT.

Yeah, based on this new info, my best guess is that the R32s must have left East New York around the same time the R16s retired in 1987. Another mystery there were the red R30s- they definitely ran on the , but I've never seen photos of them on the - only the un-repainted R27s and R30s. Some claim the Redbirds never ran on the , but I find it hard to believe that the TA would clean up only some lines based out of a given yard and not others. That and I don't think the R40 Slants showed up at East New York until the early '90s, so something else must have been used to make service on the Canarsie Line pre-1990.

Honestly, I wouldn't bother worrying about it right now, because the MTA is probably not going to do any special events until things get back to normal, and that's not happening anytime soon.

Did some more digging through the TA's Dark Ages, found absolute gold: Location: East New York Yard/Shops Photo by: Thomas Lacker Date: 1/1985 Notes: View from westbound train of East New York Yard Always assumed the R32s left the Eastern Division in late 1982, so initially I had doubts about the accuracy of the date, but then I found this- 6:25 to 19:45 in video, September 1984. Never knew R32s ran on the ; even seeing them on the back then is a bit unexpected because I thought most East New York R32s were shifted to the after 1975. Big surprise. That and the timers on the Williamsburg Bridge- I had assumed they were installed much later, in the '90s. What's also interesting is that despite all the passing trains, not a single R16 shows up, which is odd because ENY had R16s on the roster until 1987. Technically, they should have still been running when this video was taken. But great stuff anyway.

Pretty much.

Should have written down the license plate number.

THIS. No idea what will happen this time around, but personally I wouldn't be surprised if current events resulted in at least some people leaving NYC for areas that are less dense, less expensive, less polluted and less dysfunctional.

I agree that 4-5 car sets are a problem in that regard, but on the other hand, single units are too much of a hassle (parts, weight, maintenance). Kawasaki and Bombardier did not have an easy time building the R62/As as single units; the shitty A/C on the R62As, for example, is the result of a weight and/or cost-saving measure. I'm of the mind that 2-car married pairs offer a reasonable middle ground; MBTA, SEPTA, CTA, LA Metro, and many other operators have ordered married pairs long after NY stopped doing so- if it works for them, it should work for us.

Been thinking about how the TA decided to close the southern half of the Myrtle El as well as the Culver Shuttle, back in the day. Weren't passengers opposed to these closures? @Trainmaster5 do you recall what the story was back then? I'm guessing it was a money thing.

I'm glad people have brought this up- really and truly. 34th Street-Hudson Yards, 2nd Avenue Phase 1, and East Side Access; all deep-bore, full of astronomical cost overruns, full of mind-numbing delays, and far more complicated than they ever needed to be. Not to mention, having to journey to/from the center of the damn earth for a train.

LOL. But yeah, the millions of dollars this supposed "non-profit" took over 20+ years, with almost nothing to show for it, is pretty brazen. Help the homeless they did not.

Yup: 1. https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2019/07/23/non-profit-mta-homeless-report/ 2. https://www.wnyc.org/story/homeless-outreach-provider-acquired-multi-million-dollar-contract-without-bidding/ 3. https://thechiefleader.com/news/open_articles/mta-expands-efforts-to-deal-with-homeless-free-article/article_8aded69c-eb6f-11e9-8684-c7333d564d57.html Where there's smoke, there's usually fire.

Seems rather odd to me that they would contract with a company based all the way out in Steuben County instead of closer to home. That and the fact that it's by tractor trailer on the road- way more inefficient than what the MTA used to do. In the '80s, new cars and those returning from GOH came in by rail, and the cars being scrapped were sent out by barge to NJ. Economy of scale.

@Collin: The contract for the R262s hasn't been awarded yet, and if the money for new car procurement fails to materialize, then I doubt there will be any money to overhaul existing cars, either. The R62/As might be in for a very extended career at this rate...

4th Avenue has its issues, but seems to me the easiest solution is to just have the and swap terminals. As far as yard access, there's always 36th Street, which is planned to accommodate passenger-service trains in the near future, anyway.