"John Levine" wrote in message
...
This article at Gothamist has some video.

It's a three or four car train, depending on which article you
believe, running express between Times Sq and 96th streets on the 2/3
line, between 2 and 6 PM on weekends in September. The train is
authentically free of A/C.

Is this equipment that is normally at the transit museum, or is there
a cache of old trains somewhere else?

http://gothamist.com/2011/09/04/vide...k_empire_v.php


Thanks for the reference. I grew up on those trains.

There were some updates on the old cars. First, the ads made reference to
HBO, which, of course, did not exist then. AC? Ha aha ha.

The heating is under the straw seats. That was the old design. They had
some in vinyl, red as I remember. The fans in the ceiling worked nicely.

From the front, you could tell where a train was going by the color patterns
of the lights. When I was small, the front lower lights were kerosene.
This train had bright electric headlamps, an innovation which came much
later. The Flatbush line had a red and white light on the top front. The
New Lots Line had two red lights. When it came to the fork, the men who ran
the switches could see where the train was supposed to go Later they had
the train stop and the engineer had to push buttons to control the switch.

The lights inside the train were always yellowish. It looked like either
the exposure was off, or they had the PC lights installed. Also, the
destination signs were gone: they were kept in boxes just below the signs at
the end of each car. The conductor would, at the end of the line, walk
through the cars changing the signs manually. Those shown said HBO, I
believe.

The video did include the sound of the old-style motors.

What was missing from the vidos was how the train was made up. There were
even older cars running when I started school. These were the "new" ones
built by Pullman. As for the makeup, not all cars were powered. The first
and last cars were powered, but the usual 10 car trains had "trailers"
running second from the front and back, and one in the middle. I recall one
train which had most of the cars as trailers. It stalled after getting a
load they kicked us all off the President Street and we got to school late.
You could tell which cars were trailers because there was no place for the
engineer (engine driver). I used to always ride in the front car so I could
watch the signals. I could not tell if the train shown had any trailers
attached. Whoever did the videos did not know how to look for that.

By 1960 almost nothing in NYC was air conditioned, not houses, cars or the
subway either.