Tag Archive | "Transit Museum"

The MTA Roundup — Mar. 8


There have been some reports that MTA is adding another public hearing to the series. The Daily news says it’s scheduled for March 17 and will focus on the elimination of student Metrocards. Students have been among the loudest and most unified voices at the public hearings so far.

MTA Chairman Jay Walder gets personal about the transit agency’s budget woes. The New York Times reports that he’s sleepless and exhausted over the crisis.

Back to business, Walder met with PCAC last week. He said upgrading real-time arrival information (the countdown clocks) is a top priority and promised that he’s taking comments at the public hearings to heart.

Artifacts unearthed during construction of the South Ferry station will be displayed in the a new exhibit at the transit museum. Where New York Began: Archeology at South Ferry opens next week.

Gothamist gets a comment from NYC Transit spokesman Paul Fleuranges on the issue of perpetually busted station escalators.

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Tour of the New York Transit Museum


In our Hidden Tracks column we tell of the old and the defunct, the hidden and the historic.  And while I hope these topics are – by themselves – intriguing, our main goal in bringing history to the fore (the forgotten to light) is to discuss the current state of the system and the proposals for its future.

Take the 2nd avenue line. Most New Yorkers know that it has been planned for more than half a century.  Fewer might know that a special subway car was designed for use on this, as of yet unrealized, route.  Those cars – the R11 type – were delivered to the city in 1949 and, because the 2nd avenue line was nowhere to be found, used on other parts of the network.  The R11 was intensely modern with under-the seat heaters, an advanced ventilation system and sterilizing lights.  The last surviving exemplar of the car now sits at the New York Transportation Museum.

The New York Transportation Museum is a great historical museum.  Housed in a 1936 shuttle station named for the nearby Brooklyn Criminal Court, it houses a score of historic subway cars.  While the age of the exhibits ranges from the very old – a turn-of-the-last-century Brooklyn Union car is on display that made the transition from el underground – to the recently retired, all cars actually run.  And though the station has not been in use by commuters for more than sixty years, its tracks remain active and each of the exhibits can be – and sometimes are – taken on the active systems’ rails.  Since all power to the exhibit cars is supplied by the active third rail, the visitor has the very real sense of being in a subway, waiting at a station.  This sense contributes to making this museum one of the great time machines this city has to offer.


— Christopher F. Schuetze

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