R10 2952

The was hit and miss. Most of the time it was less than half-full during rush hour, although I do remember one exception when it had more people, but again, very rare. It was basically the 's mediocre sidekick on 4th Avenue.

Because the was cut from Bay Parkway and the TA isn't interested in bringing back a second West End service at this time.

I miss the R42s on 8th Avenue , but an extra R32 consist is good too. Any chance it will be a Rockaway Park put-in during rush hours? Haven't seen an R32 go to/from Beach 116th in about 5 years...

Strange that a four-track line like Fulton only saw rush-hour express service for so many years; talk about underutilization. A three-track line I could understand, but four is a different story...

67.5' cars would actually be a reasonable compromise between 60 and 75 feet; aside from lengthening the platforms to accommodate 10-car trains. It would certainly solve the clearance issue on the Eastern Division...

Exactly, the R42s are in nowhere near as bad a shape as some of the R38s and R40s were in their last days of service...

Another NTT fail; who didn't see that coming...

Yeah, I'm sure it will be easier once all the ice melts from greenhouse gas emissions and the metropolitan area gets submerged by seawater...

Exactly. Glad to see I'm not the only one who realizes this...

A single diesel locomotive delivering subway cars can probably pull 20-50 cars, a single tractor-trailer can only pull one. 20-50 trucks carrying 90,000-pound cars generate a lot more pollution then one locomotive pulling them by rail, not to mention that streets wear down faster when you have big rigs traveling over them, plus the traffic congestion caused (they do not go very fast). So yeah, from an outdated 1980s-free market perspective, trucks are 'economical' and I'm sure the Teamsters Union would agree with you, but when one factors in the primarily environmental costs, those significantly outweigh the supposed benefits. And people wonder where the greenhouse effect comes from....

Even if they're doing some against the rules, getting in their face about it is never a good idea. There was a time not so long ago in this city (pre-2005) when speaking up was liable to get a person jumped, or worse. Like this one time in the '90s when a neighbor asked some kids to stop drinking at the corner they came back later that night and set fire to the building's dumpster- street smelled like fried garbage for weeks...

Wouldn't it simply be easier to transport them by rail? Like before 1990? Ironic that a railcar manufacturing plant ships trains to a transit agency via tractor trailer of all things...

This whole Penn Station thing got me thinking that Cuomo might be gearing up for a White House run in a few years- God forbid. Haven't corrupt elitists like him and Hillary done enough to stain the Democratic Party's reputation for progressivism? What a shame Sanders was cheated by these beasts of no nation...

Actually, I'm more of a Sanders guy, FYI. Trump is awful, and so is Clinton honestly. Truly this country is fxcked if those two are what pass for sensible options in this election... Aaanyway, back to the topic at hand- what's the current plan for when the R179s displace the R42s? Is the scrapping going to commence this year, or are some going to remain? Any word on sending them to different lines?

Bingo, this is exactly what I was getting at. As opposed to some others who, instead of coming up with meaningful solutions, would rather sell their own country down the river. Failing to see that globalization is a front for multinational corporations to oppress the rest of us is a far more dangerous fallacy. The ideal situation would be a middle ground between isolationism and unrestrained free trade- nowadays, the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of deregulation.

That's an incredibly defeatist attitude; this country used to be one of ingenuity and that some of you are okay with foreign companies dominating our market is troubling. I'm sure globalization sounds like a great thing to certain people, but the stronger the unrestrained free market grows, the greater the marginalization of ordinary citizens.

Pinto, Granada, Edsel, Taurus... there was more than one Ford dud, tbh. To be fair, when did companies like ACF, Budd, and Pressed Steel ever not show a dedication to craft? (I conspicuously left St. Louis and Pullman out for a good reason). Even the M3s, which were the next-to-last railcars built by Budd in the '80s, were fairly decent. Modern-day American manufacturers are a different story, but it's not that they can't build a good product- they're just not being properly incentivized to do so. And free-trade, neoliberal BS that lets in foreign manufacturers like Kawasaki is exactly the reason why so many working people in this country are being harmed economically. Better quality from American manufacturers can be achieved through the development of rigorous quality-control regulations.

Anyone else notice how unstable the suspension is on the R46s? Like riding on a waterbed- it's ridiculous...

These companies make money off of stuff they build here and it all goes back to headquarters outside our borders. SubwayGuy has certainly made good points on these boards about the need for trade protectionism. And regarding technology, it would be a lot cheaper if the TA just realized they could still build cars with rollsigns and SMEE braking. Computers are not essential to a train's design- functionality is. Cast-iron brakes are more fundamental than FIND displays. You won't see an R62 get taken out of service because a systems monitor got gunked up with steel dust.

I wouldn't rule anything out. ACF built subway cars before, so they do have the qualifications. They would simply need to be properly incentivized to resume building passenger stock. A long shot, granted, but not impossible. Y'all need to stop worshipping these multinational foreign-based conglomerates like Alstom; they contribute to the erosion of the U.S. manufacturing base. Maybe St. Louis Car and Pullman did indeed screw up with the R44/46 orders, but not giving US-based companies a fair chance at a contract for 40+ years is simply not objective.

At this point I'd much rather seem an actual American company build the order. Kawasaki and Bombardier might have facilities upstate, but they're still foreign companies at the end of the day. And with this whole perfect shitstorm that is the R179 contract, the TA may as well be going hat in hand to American Car & Foundry and beg them to get back in the passenger railcar business. I'd take ACF over these jokers anyday...

Not necessarily. The R26s and R28s were in much worse shape already in the mid-1990s, yet they managed to hang on until 2002. And they were all carbon steel; at least the R42s are mostly stainless.

Well I've never been a huge fan of service proposals, but with the whole upcoming reconstruction in 2017 I can't help but throw my hat in the ring, so here goes: Split the route for the duration of the construction- have the northern segment terminate at 2nd Avenue and call it the or something, and have the southern segment run from Myrtle Avenue or Broadway Junction to some point on the Nassau Street Line like Chambers or Broad and designate it the (much as I'd like to see a return to Bay Parkway, you can bet that no train will be running from Nassau into Brooklyn until the TA gets around to repairing the Montague leads).

No, I am well aware of the stub tracks and the eastern platform, having taken trains to and from there myself back in the day- this was back when select and trains would terminate at Canal Street in the middle, before they pulled up the inner track on the southbound side. But when I was using the station, there was only that cramped entrance on the west side of Centre Street. What I'm trying to find out more about is the closed entrance that was presumably on the east side of Centre Street- where it was, when it closed, and so on. Actually, I did some digging yesterday and found this: https://cdn.viewing.nyc/assets/4f6e4c45-d728-4c8c-802b-6d59a268d204/image-6-s-91084991c2c11bbc3f02b1faafe8a0be.jpg https://cdn.viewing.nyc/assets/4f6e4c45-d728-4c8c-802b-6d59a268d204/image-7-s-32435f22a5267a8ce7a6f95f77224cc8.jpg https://cdn.viewing.nyc/assets/4f6e4c45-d728-4c8c-802b-6d59a268d204/image-8-s-e796f4a81449498960e4a76bb4e459f5.jpg So I guess there was a second entrance. Even back in the late '90s, I found it odd that there was only one entrance to the Nassau Street Line and only an underpass to the eastern platform. I always had suspicions that there must have been another street-level egress at one point. Anybody remember using Canal Street and going by a brick-patterned booth pre-1999?

I remember hearing somewhere that Canal Street on the used to have an eastern entrance with a token booth (presumably on the other side of Centre Street), where the original northbound platform is. I used to go through that station fairly often, so I reckon it must've closed sometime in the mid-1990s. Anyone care to shed some light on this?