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Saturday, April 14, 2012 10:07:02 AM
Ride to Ballgame on Vintage Train Transports Fans to Another Era
By C. J. HUGHES
A subway train came and went. And another, and a few more. But the crowd gathered on an uptown platform in Grand Central Station on Friday morning was not budging.
Then, a few minutes after noon, the mystery was explained, even if the fuss was not completely understood: a vintage train arrived, looking its period best, with fatigue-green sides; large, easy-to-open windows; and ads plastered to its walls saying, “Thoughtful mothers bake and fry with Crisco.”
Introduced about a century ago and last used for regular runs in the 1960s, the train was a low-voltage model, known as a Lo-V to those there to greet it.
On Friday, it was pressed into service to shuttle riders to the Bronx for the first home game of the season at Yankee Stadium, as it has been before. A Lo-V has made a run to the stadium every year since 1917.
For its eager riders traveling the No. 4 line, though, the sports tie-in was almost incidental.
“Seeing the new pieces of junk versus the Lo-V’s, it’s a very big deal,” said Arjun Laal, 17, a student at East New York High School of Transit Technology’s Bronx campus, who brought a video camera to film the whole trip.
It was not an unfamiliar thrill. Arjun estimates he has ridden the Lo-V over 100 times, seeking it out whenever New York City Transit, the arm of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that runs the subways, dusts it off for special occasions — mostly having to do with baseball.
If Arjun is a fan, Jeremiah Cox of Washington Heights, who stood nearby with his own camera, might be a fanatic. After graduating from college this year, the 22-year-old, who runs a train-focused Web site, will spend a year living off his savings and taking photos of the country’s railroad stations. The Lo-V traveling on Friday, which at four cars is shorter than the typical, modern eight-car subway train, quickly filled with riders as it made its way north, and most seemed to be along just for the ride.
Carl, 48, who would not give his last name because he was absent without leave from work, noted the train’s old-fashioned indoor cooling system — fan blades that whirled on the ceiling without any protective guards. “You can’t stretch out because you might lose a finger or two,” he joked.
Others marveled over how the narrow rattan benches lining the walls seemed to provide more leg room than on modern trains, helped by the absence of poles interrupting the floor. Riders instead clutched rows of handles above, illuminated by naked white bulbs.
Though the train seemed spacious, passengers were squeezed tight by the time it reached East 86th Street, so much so that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, surrounded by police officers, could not even get on. (He caught a conventional No. 4 train right behind it, a spokeswoman said.)
To some riders, nothing seemed ordinary or unworthy of a picture. Phones were thrust within inches of noses to snap images of an old map taped to a window. Others were transfixed by the dated lines of ads, which in car No. 5483 — built in 1924 and in service till 1969 — included one for Campbell’s pea, celery, tomato and asparagus soups. In another, a woman lay on her stomach, flipping through a magazine and saying of Coca-Cola, “I think it’s swell.”
The ride was not without hitches. As it pulled away from East 149th Street, a door in one car stayed open, prompting a transit worker to gasp, “Stop! Stop! Stop!” before the train was halted and the door manually closed.
Just two people are needed to run a subway train today, a transit spokesman said, though a dozen were running the train on Friday, with at least one worker per car to call out the names of the stops.
If the journey was more of a trip back in time than a way to get to the ballpark, Yankees fans caught in the hoopla did not seem to mind.
“So much of New York is always changing,” said Micah Grossman, 35, a sales executive from Gramercy Park. “It’s good to bring a piece of it back once in a while, to learn how we’ve changed.”
As for which group is more single-minded, Yankees fans or train buffs, he said, laughing, there was no doubt: “Train fans are definitely more obsessive.”
By C. J. HUGHES
A subway train came and went. And another, and a few more. But the crowd gathered on an uptown platform in Grand Central Station on Friday morning was not budging.
Then, a few minutes after noon, the mystery was explained, even if the fuss was not completely understood: a vintage train arrived, looking its period best, with fatigue-green sides; large, easy-to-open windows; and ads plastered to its walls saying, “Thoughtful mothers bake and fry with Crisco.”
Introduced about a century ago and last used for regular runs in the 1960s, the train was a low-voltage model, known as a Lo-V to those there to greet it.
On Friday, it was pressed into service to shuttle riders to the Bronx for the first home game of the season at Yankee Stadium, as it has been before. A Lo-V has made a run to the stadium every year since 1917.
For its eager riders traveling the No. 4 line, though, the sports tie-in was almost incidental.
“Seeing the new pieces of junk versus the Lo-V’s, it’s a very big deal,” said Arjun Laal, 17, a student at East New York High School of Transit Technology’s Bronx campus, who brought a video camera to film the whole trip.
It was not an unfamiliar thrill. Arjun estimates he has ridden the Lo-V over 100 times, seeking it out whenever New York City Transit, the arm of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that runs the subways, dusts it off for special occasions — mostly having to do with baseball.
If Arjun is a fan, Jeremiah Cox of Washington Heights, who stood nearby with his own camera, might be a fanatic. After graduating from college this year, the 22-year-old, who runs a train-focused Web site, will spend a year living off his savings and taking photos of the country’s railroad stations. The Lo-V traveling on Friday, which at four cars is shorter than the typical, modern eight-car subway train, quickly filled with riders as it made its way north, and most seemed to be along just for the ride.
Carl, 48, who would not give his last name because he was absent without leave from work, noted the train’s old-fashioned indoor cooling system — fan blades that whirled on the ceiling without any protective guards. “You can’t stretch out because you might lose a finger or two,” he joked.
Others marveled over how the narrow rattan benches lining the walls seemed to provide more leg room than on modern trains, helped by the absence of poles interrupting the floor. Riders instead clutched rows of handles above, illuminated by naked white bulbs.
Though the train seemed spacious, passengers were squeezed tight by the time it reached East 86th Street, so much so that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, surrounded by police officers, could not even get on. (He caught a conventional No. 4 train right behind it, a spokeswoman said.)
To some riders, nothing seemed ordinary or unworthy of a picture. Phones were thrust within inches of noses to snap images of an old map taped to a window. Others were transfixed by the dated lines of ads, which in car No. 5483 — built in 1924 and in service till 1969 — included one for Campbell’s pea, celery, tomato and asparagus soups. In another, a woman lay on her stomach, flipping through a magazine and saying of Coca-Cola, “I think it’s swell.”
The ride was not without hitches. As it pulled away from East 149th Street, a door in one car stayed open, prompting a transit worker to gasp, “Stop! Stop! Stop!” before the train was halted and the door manually closed.
Just two people are needed to run a subway train today, a transit spokesman said, though a dozen were running the train on Friday, with at least one worker per car to call out the names of the stops.
If the journey was more of a trip back in time than a way to get to the ballpark, Yankees fans caught in the hoopla did not seem to mind.
“So much of New York is always changing,” said Micah Grossman, 35, a sales executive from Gramercy Park. “It’s good to bring a piece of it back once in a while, to learn how we’ve changed.”
As for which group is more single-minded, Yankees fans or train buffs, he said, laughing, there was no doubt: “Train fans are definitely more obsessive.”
Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.
- Will Rogers
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