New York Transit Museum

The New York Transit Museum examines the impact of public transit on the growth and development of the NY metropolitan region.   

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#SavetheDate for #BusFest! Our vintage buses are ready to make a splash at a NEW LOCATION for our 25th annual #BusFestival!

On Sunday, October 7th, join us at BROOKLYN BRIDGE PARK to board and explore our fleet of historic buses! Enjoy special activities and photo ops, meet some of the bus drivers who help keep our city moving, and take in the view of the Manhattan skyline from our new location underneath the Brooklyn Bridge!

We can’t wait to celebrate with you at our brand new location!

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#DidYouKnow that the IRT West Side line is home to many #HiddenTreasures?  New Yorkers are undoubtedly familiar with the iconic tiles and mosaics that decorate IRT stations. However, a trip on a northbound 1 train to Upper Manhattan would reveal some gorgeous, but lesser known, treasures such as the 191st, 181st, and 168th Street stations. Both 181st and 168th Street stations were opened in 1906 along with stations to 221st Street. However, 191st Street did not open until January 14, 1911 as additional work had to be completed such as the installation of elevators.

Do you have a favorite station on the IRT West Side line?

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Poetry in Motion at 25 is now on view at the New York Transit Museum’s #GrandCentralTerminal Gallery Annex & Store! Presented by the Poetry Society of America, MTA Arts & Design, and the New York Transit Museum, #PoetryinMotion25 celebrates the beloved program that has delighted subway and bus riders with its selection of short, stimulating verses from a variety of published poets since 1992 when it first displayed an excerpt from Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.”

On display at our Gallery Annex is nearly 100 original Poetry in Motion car cards with an additional 50 on digital display. If you’ve visited, comment below your favorite poem in the exhibit!

Learn more at www.nytransitmuseum.org/exhibits

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Presented by the Poetry Society of America, MTA Arts & Design, and the #NYTransitMuseum, “Poetry in Motion at 25” celebrates the beloved program that has delighted subway and bus riders with its selection of short, stimulating verses from a variety of published poets since 1992. Since its creation in 1992, the program has presented over 200 poems to millions of commuters each day.

Now on view at the #Museum’s Gallery Annex at #GrandCentralTerminal, half of the original #PoetryinMotion car cards are on display alongside historic photographs and fifty digital reproductions of additional car cards. Poems that were selected to be displayed in the new exhibit celebrate and reflect a broad range of voices in the poem collection from the New York Transit Museum Archives.

Learn more at www.nytransitmuseum.org/exhibits. #PoetryinMotion25

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#TodayInHistory: #OnThisDay in 1918, the IRT West Side line was officially opened south of Times Square. Prior to August 1, multiple shuttle services ran on the south half of the line. When Fulton St station opened on July 1, 1918 a shuttle service was implemented between Chambers and Wall Street to serve the station. A month later, the north side of the IRT West Side line (part of #NYC’s original subway) was officially joined with the new stations south of Times Square. This new system, under the Dual Contracts, was known as the “H” system and resulted in the IRT East Side line being extended north of 42nd Street and the IRT West Side line being extended south of 42nd Street.

The photo below from the #NYTMCollection was taken at Park Place station in 1965. Do you visit this station on your daily commute?

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#DidYouKnow that the #NYTransitMuseum has more than just NYC subway cars in its Moving the Millions exhibit on the Museum’s platform level?

This Long Island Rail Road Caboose, on loan from the Twin Forks Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, was manufactured in 1961 in Buffalo, New York by Morrison International Corporation. The caboose, C-60, was in service on the #LIRR from 1961 to the 1990s. Also known as a “cabin car”, it was an integral part of work trains as it functioned as an office, kitchen, storage, and sleeping quarters for the train crew. The car is colored bright orange as a safety precaution to protect the rear of the work train.

C-60 was one of the last cabooses used in work train and freight service on the LIRR, as cabooses were eventually replaced with rear-end safety devices. The car was officially retired in 2002 and acquired and restored by the Twin Forks Chapter in 2003. C-60 is the first car from the Long Island Rail Road ever featured at the Museum.

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We recently had the opportunity to spend the day on a Track Geometry Car (TGC4) as it inspected the 8th Avenue Line from Jay St – Metrotech to 207th Street. The TGC4 features special equipment to measure track geometry, and can even detect flaws inside the rail with ultrasonic sound waves. Track geometry equipment inspects the rails for visible defects such as warp, alignment, cross-level, curvature, rail gauge, and visible cracks or splits. It also checks the third rail to make sure it is in gauge and there are no “hot spots”, where poor electrical conductivity can cause the third rail to heat up. The front of the Track Geometry Car is equipped with bright lights and visible/infrared cameras to capture videos at various angles of the tracks and the third rail, allowing crew to see the tracks clearly.

The ultrasonic equipment in TGC4 checks for defects inside of the rail that cannot be seen with the cameras on the TGC. This includes: transverse fissures (long narrow cracks), compound fissures, broken rails, and split webs. To test the rails ultrasonically, the car is equipped with small rubber wheels that have ultrasonic transducers in them. The transducers inside the rubber wheels bounce ultrasonic sound waves off of the rail at different angles to search for defects that can’t be seen by eye. The ultrasonic sound waves don’t travel well through air, so the TGC has its own water supply, which it squirts on the rails to make sure that the ultrasonic waves propagate cleanly in and out of the rail.

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The Franklin Avenue Shuttle, dubbed “The Little Train that Can” by the #NewYorkTimes, is a two car train that runs in Brooklyn from the Franklin Avenue station to the Prospect Park station along Franklin Avenue. The shuttle runs solely via the BMT Franklin Avenue line. When the line first opened in 1878, trains operated from Franklin Avenue to Coney Island via the Brighton Line. However, ridership began to decline on this service in the 1940s.

In 1963, the line began to operate as a shuttle full time. Over the years, it has been suggested that the shuttle service be discontinued due to low ridership and crumbling stations. In the 1990s, the stations on the line were rehabilitated and the Dean Street station was closed due to high fare evasion and low ridership. Today, over 20,000 people ride the Franklin Avenue shuttle daily and the line provides key transfers to the B, C, Q, 2/3, and 4/5 lines.

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#TodayinHistory: #OnThisDay in 1953, subway and bus fares rose to 15 cents. Because subway turnstiles could not accept more than one coin, the iconic #NYCsubway token was introduced. The original subway token has been dubbed the “small Y” token and was used in the system from 1953 – 1970. In 1966, the fare was raised to 20 cents. During the token’s 50 years in circulation, many variations were introduced including the “Bullseye”, “Five Boroughs”, and “Diamond Jubilee” tokens. Learn more about transit fare collection in our exhibit, Ticket to Ride, #NowonView at the #Museum in Downtown Brooklyn.

Do you have any original tokens in your collection?

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#TodayinHistory: #OnThisDay in 1965, the last BMT D-Type Triplex cars ran via West End local during the morning rush hour.

The BMT first introduced D-Type cars to the #NYC subway system in 1925 as part of an effort to transition from wooden cars to steel-bodied cars, a safer alternative. The official arrival of the D-Type fleet in 1927 allowed many A/B Standards (aka BRT Standards) to be transferred to the East New York division, thus replacing the wooden elevated cars. The D-Types originally ran via the BMT Fourth Avenue local in Brooklyn, terminating at Queensboro Plaza. Eventually, they were transferred to the Sea Beach express line.

Have you ever taken a trip on the Museum’s #vintage D-Type Triplexes?

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#DidYouKnow that the 207th Street Yard, located in Upper #Manhattan near the 207th St stations on the A and 1 lines, services both A and B division cars? Visible from the University Heights Bridge over the Harlem River, the yard primarily stores R32s, R46s, and R160s for the A/C lines, but also provides regular scheduled maintenance to both IRT and IND/BMT cars.

In addition to regularly scheduled maintenance, the 207th Street Shops are equipped to overhaul and rebuild current rolling stock, as well as the #NYTransitMuseum’s vintage fleet! Trains are also sent to 207th Street to be stripped of useable parts before being scrapped.

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#TodayinHistory: #OnThisDay 100 years ago, the IRT Lexington Avenue line opened from #GrandCentral – 42nd Street all the way to 125th Street! The first portion of the line opened in 1904 with 28 stations from Downtown Manhattan to the Upper West Side, forming a “Z” shaped transit system. The expansion of the system under Contract 3 of the Dual Contracts created the current “H” shaped system. Until trains reach Grand Central Terminal, the lines run via Park Avenue South, but due to the location of MetroNorth’s tracks, the line had to be oriented toward Lexington Avenue at Grand Central.

Including a new platform at Grand Central, 11 new stations opened on the East Side line that reached areas that had never before been served by the subway. Today, the Lexington Avenue line is the busiest train line in the United States, transporting over 1 million people daily. It is served by the 6 train via the local track, and the 4/5 via the express track.

Which station on the Lexington Avenue line is your favorite?

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We couldn’t be more excited about our newest exhibit #NowOnView at the #NYTransitMuseum in Downtown Brooklyn! #UndergroundHeroes: New York Transit in Comics explores the rich history of our transportation system as the star of a variety of comics and graphic novels. With work from more than 120 different artists featured in the exhibit, the #NYC transit system serves as the scene for heroic rescues, the secret lairs of supervillains, the site for epic battles of wills, and so much more.

Featured below is an excerpt from “Minimum Wage” by Bob Fingerman. Plan your visit to the Transit Museum to see more! nytransitmuseum.org/visit

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#TodayinHistory: #OnThisDay 43 years ago, the first two #R46 trains entered revenue service on the F and N lines. The R46 cars were built by the Pullman Standard Company for the B division between 1975 and 1978.

The R46 fleet was manufactured to be nearly identical to the R44s that began serving the #NYC subway just a few years earlier. Thankfully, unlike the R44, experimental carpeting was not installed on R46s. Instead, the R46 came equipped with more practical, durable, and hygienic rubber flooring.

Due to various issues, the arrival of the R46 fleet was delayed by three years. Considered to be “lemons,” the cars were overhauled to improve various mechanical functions and fix car-body defects. Today, the remaining R46 fleet serve the A/C, F, and R lines, and the Rockaway Park Shuttle.

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#TodayinHistory: #OnThisDay 113 years ago, the IRT Lexington Avenue Line was extended south to #BowlingGreen station. The station opened less than a month after the Wall Street station opened, but three years before the Joralemon Street Tunnel would open, so all Downtown bound trains terminated at South Ferry for its first few years of revenue service.

After the tunnel opened, a second island platform was constructed at Bowling Green along with a third track. This allowed all rush-hour trains on the Lexington Avenue line to continue to #Brooklyn. In 1909, a shuttle service to South Ferry accommodated the loss of rush-hour service to the station. Shortly after the shuttle service was terminated in 1977, Bowling Green went through renovations wherein it lost one island platform on the western side of the station and gained a side platform to the east.

Do you remember the Bowling Green – South Ferry Shuttle service?

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The New York Central Rail Road was formed in 1853 by an amalgamation of various smaller railroads in upstate New York. Over the next decade, the company acquired additional independent railroad lines, but a major point of growth for the New York Central was in 1869 during the “Vanderbilt Years.” The New York Central merged with the Hudson River Railroad on November 1, 1869, connecting the whole system to #Albany to #NewYorkCity along the Hudson River.

The 1876 #map below, courtesy of the New York Transit Museum Archives, shows the extensive New York Central and Hudson River Railroad System.

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#NYTMmembers: Take a break from the summer heat with a morning at the Transit Museum tomorrow from 10am- 11am! #MemberMornings are just one of the year-round perks that come with a #NYTransitMuseum membership. Museum members enjoy free admission, special members-only programs and excursions, exclusive invitations and promotions throughout Members Appreciation Month, and 10% off merchandise at all of our retail locations!

Not a member yet? Join or renew today at nytransitmuseum.org/membership!