Tag Archives: New York

Bus Photo of the Month: January 2024

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1956 GMC TDH-5106 Old Look 3100

Location: West 42nd Street & 9th Avenue, New York, NY
Operator of Vehicle: MTA New York City Transit
Date of Photo: December 12, 2012

In addition to running the vintage train during the holiday season as I wrote about yesterday, for some number of years, the MTA also ran vintage buses in service during the December holiday period.  Most years, the service was limited to Manhattan, but there were other years the buses ventured out into other parts of the city, including the other four boroughs.  I don’t believe the vintage buses have run since 2018.  It was often hard to catch one since even the slightest bit of precipitation would result in them being pulled off the road for safety reasons, plus they were subject to traffic delays and the like.  However, I did get to ride some of them in 2012.  

Would you want the MTA to try bringing back the vintage buses in a future year?

For more photos of MTA New York City Transit’s GMC Old Look Buses, please click here.  

Rail Photo of the Month: June 2021

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R62A 1750R62A 1750

Location: Grand Central-42nd Street Station, New York, NY
Operator of Vehicle: MTA New York City Transit
Date of Photo: March 24, 2017

Last week, I had a business trip to New York City.  Despite not having been on public transit for over 400 days due to the Covid-19 pandemic, being back on the rails didn’t feel all that different, until I descended in to the subway to take the 6 train to where I was having dinner.  I consider the 6 train to be my “home route” in New York, but after about 15 years of R142As exclusively serving the line, I’m still not used to seeing R62As, such as the one pictured here, on this route.  One might think that this would be an easy adjustment to make, as R62As were the predominant car type from the late 1980s until the introduction of the R142A in 2000.  However, for some reason, I just haven’t gotten used to their reintroduction along the Lexington Avenue Line.  Is there any vehicle assignment and line pairing that just seems out of place to you, no matter how hard you try getting used to it?

Although the sight of an R62A on the 6 still seems unusual to me, I really like this picture because of how the curved platform creates a “snaking effect” for the yellow platform edge and makes it possible to see the front part of the train from the location where I took the photo near the rear end of the platform.   Curved platforms are definitely a relic of older systems such as New York’s and while they pose a variety of accessibility and safety concerns, they can also make for some interesting photography vantage points.

For more photos of the R62A Subway Cars, please click here.

Rail Photo of the Month: September 2019

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PA-1 657

PA-1 657

Location: Exchange Place Station, Jersey City, NJ
Operator of Vehicle: Port Authority of New York & New Jersey
Date of Photo: September 4, 2001

Next week, the anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks will be commemorated.  One can cite a long list of things that changed in the wake of the terrorist attacks that no one would have expected in the years since.  On the transit side of things, one did not feel a sense of urgency to visit the World Trade Center PATH station on September 4, 2001, just one week before the station would be destroyed when the Twin Towers collapsed.  I certainly did not, which is why I opted to transfer to trains at Exchange Place instead of at World Trade Center while traveling between Newark and Hoboken that day.  As it turned out, I would never have a chance to visit the original World Trade Center station, and it would be the only station on PATH that I did not travel to prior to September 2001.  I have since been to the temporary station that opened in 2003, but not the Santiago Calatrava designed Oculus 

For more photos of PATH, please click here.

 

The NYC Vintage Holiday Train is Back!

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For the past 10+ years, New York City Transit has operated its vintage R1-9 trains from the 1930s.  Unlike most other times these trains operate when only passengers who purchase a special ticket may board the train for an excursion, the holiday train is open to anyone who pays a regular subway fare.  In past years, the train would run along the V and later the M lines between 2nd Avenue on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and Queens Plaza.  However, for the first time, this year the train will be taking a different route.  While it will start at 2nd Avenue, this year it will travel on the F line to Lexington Avenue/63rd Street and then continue on the Q line to the new 96th Street/2nd Avenue station.

The holiday train operates each Sunday through December 24th.  It departs 2nd Avenue at 10 AM, 12PM, 2 PM, and 4 PM, and it departs 96th Street at 11 AM, 1 PM, 3 PM, and 5 PM.

Do you plan to ride it this year?

Oren’s Reading List: A Complete and Geographically Accurate NYC Subway Track Map

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Back in February 2016, there was a Travelogue post about Andrew Lynch’s totally accurate but totally useless subway maps.  This week, I’ve seen another one of Andrew Lynch’s projects floating around the internet, and I think this one falls in to the same category.  This week’s hot topic is his complete and geographically accurate NYC subway track map.  A track map is a map that shows all the tracks of a given subway, including the switching tracks, non-revenue connections between lines, and so on.  The point of using this type of map isn’t so much to be able to navigate from point A to point B, but rather to understand how the subway system as a whole comes together, and in the case of a system as complex as New York’s, to see the myriad of routing options available for all the trains.

However, in my opinion, I think the value of a geographically accurate track map is limited.  As I’ve discussed here and there in other posts, there are certainly times where it is interesting to see how things are laid out geographically, as opposed to on the not-to-scale subway maps that are generally used for navigation by the public.  However, if the primary purpose of a track map is to show how all the individual tracks and platforms come together to form a single system, how necessary is it that everything be exactly to scale?  On the flip side, especially in the case of New York where the MTA’s map distorts geography and makes some lines that are quite close together appear much further apart, it is fascinating to see how the B, D, F, and M trains not only pass under the 4, 5, and 6 tracks within the Broadway-Lafayette Station, but also the N, Q, R, and W tracks, or how the 2, 3, 4, 5, B, and Q trains all operate under Flatbush Avenue for a distance in Brooklyn.

View this map on Andrew Lynch’s website by clicking here.  

Do you prefer having a scale track map, or does Andrew Lynch’s latest creation fall in to the accurate but useless category?  Leave a comment with your opinion!

Oren’s Reading List is an occasional feature on The Travelogue in which I share articles that I’ve read that might also be of interest to the readers of this website.