Trolley Thursday 12/16/20 - The IND and NYCTA R-Type Subway Cars

If you are an upstart street railroad in America, you'd think the way to pack your rosters is to approach a company like J.G. Brill or G.C. Kuhlman and offer to buy one of their standard, cataloged designs out of a pamphlet. Often times, street railways in Philadelphia or Cincinnati would actually collaborate with their local carmakers to design products to fit their own needs, like the famous Peter Witt Car. For a city as big and as varied as New York, however, they decided to do things a little differently. Starting in the Electric Railway Journal, the city's Board of Transportation advertised that it would "soon advertise for bids for the construction of 300 steel cars for service on the Eighth Avenue-Central Park West-Washington Heights line of the new subway system." Little did the Board and their operating division, the Independent Subway Service, know that over 90 years later, these contract bids would still be going with the car numbers types rising to almost 200 by this year! (2020) How did all of this happen? Hop on board today's Trolley Thursday to find out, as we take a ride on board New York's R-Type Fleet!

Declare Independence from Private Transit!

An IND Lines patch.
(Antiques Navigator)

When it was formed in 1932, the Independent Subway System (IND, originally the "Independent City-Owned Rapid Transit Railroad") was meant to be a municipal alternative to the privately-owned companies of the Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) and the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Company (BMT). Under the "Dual Contracts" signed by the two railroads, they managed to improve much of the city's elevated and subway lines on an unfairly-shoestring budget; neither company was allowed to raise its fares to combat the heavy losses and the city maintained complete ownership of the infrastructure and the cars. 

Mayor John Hylan originally proposed a system like the IND in 1922, hoping to expand it over 100 miles and directly compete with the IRT and BMT through track extensions and new subways installed to connect previously unserved portions of Manhattan and Brooklyn. However, by the time ground broke on the IND in 1925, the plan was severely pared down to remove redundant services and put more relief into easing congestion. This included a crosstown subway under 53rd Street from the East River to Queen's Plaza and a subway under the Bronx's Grand Concourse. Sweetening the deal for both transit planners and the public was the assurance that every nickel and dime spent on a fare would go back to the city and said profits from the subway was all for the city council, with none shared to the private companies. However, there was one small problem.

And that's not just because Mayor Hylan's planned expansions were cancelled.
(George Conrad)

Calling All Stations

As construction was underway for the first leg of the IND's new Eighth Avenue Line, a trunk line between 207th Street to Chambers Street, and five different tunnels under most of Manhattan's river and canal crossings, the city's Board of Transportation (BoT) tasked its engineers to start designing a newer and more modern subway car than the ones IRT and BMT were still running at the time. Close attention was paid to the BMT's subway cars, which were longer and wider than IRT's elevated stock, as the first of IND's lines were underground and shared some routing with the BMT. After some engineering, the city contracted out the first car type, the R-1, in the pages of the Electric Railway Journal in November 1928: 

An American Car & Foundry
worker's ID badge, WWII-era.
(Flying Tiger Antiques)

The New York City Board of Transportation announced today that it will soon advertise for bids for the construction of 300 steel cars for service on the Eighth Avenue-Central Park West-Washington Heights line of the new subway system. [...] For nearly a year, the members of the board and its engineers have been consulting and conducting research on the design of a steel car. As a result it is expected that the cars of the city's new subway system will afford greater capacity and facility, will be faster in operation and have less crowding for the amount of traffic anticipated than other cars now in use in the city.

With the horn sounded, every single carmaker who read the Electric Railway Journal put up bids for the lucrative city contract. American Car & Foundry (ACF) of Berwick, PA, accepted the R-1 contract, ponying up an estimated cost of $6,326,400 for a 300-car order. This was $2 million under what the BoT expected to actually pay, but the city was pleased; they'd get their new subway cars and at a fraction of the price expected. This was to be the first of 13 contracted R-Types ACF built for New York, with many more cars, and contractors, still to come.

The Arnines

The first order of R-1 subway cars arriving at New York's 207th Street Yard in August, 1931.
(Ed Watson/Arthur Lonto Collection)

R-1 No. 100 works a 2016 Christmastime Nostalgia 
Train at the behest of the New York Transit Museum.
(Fan Railer)

Between 1930 and 1931, the first 300 R1s arrived in New York. Dressed in a handsome Pullman Green with "City of New York" written in white letters along the sides, the new cars looked stylish and modern. Due to the fact no IND line was even open for testing yet, the cars were run on the BMT Sea Beach Line and proved so satisfactory that New York contracted ACF to build 300 more identical cars under the designation R4. Both cars were near identical to each other, featuring an unprecedented four doors per side to ease rush boarding, a total capacity of 56 people with options to walk from car to car in motion, and wider rattan-bench seating to provide more knee and standing room. Ceiling fans, illuminated destination signs, and white-enamel hand straps further classed up the cars.

The standard "Arnine" interior: clean, refreshing,
and modern for the time period.
(Fan Railer)

By the time the R4s arrived in 1932, the IND Eighth Avenue Line opened, inaugurating service on the "A" Express from Manhattan's Inwood neighborhood to Chambers Street in the Financial District. New Yorkers seemed to love the new R-cars, whose interiors seemed to outshine anything the IRT or BMT could come up with, and soon after the City contracted a further design, the also-near-identical R6 to meet increased demand in Brooklyn and Queens. This was the first to be spread across three different manufacturers, with the R6-3 delivered by ACF in 1935, the R6-2 by Pullman in 1936, and the R6-1 by Pressed Steel that same year. 

Contracts began to get more lucrative as the 1930s drew to a close, with the R7s being won by the ACF and Pullman Standard for $40,375 per car and the R9s jointly constructed by ACF and Pressed Steel. Both car types were purchased in preparation for more IND subway expansion on the Sixth Avenue Line and the Crosstown Line, but they were also the last cars purchased by the IND in general. In 1940, when the R9s were delivered, the IRT and BMT's assets were purchased by the city and both were merged into the IND to create the modern New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA). The pre-merger fleet was retroactively nicknamed by enthusiasts as the "Arnines" (R1-through-9) and the next contract wouldn't be offered until after World War II.

A color view of the famous "A" train, northbound to Washington Heights at 59th Street/
Columbus Circle. This is March 4, 1968.
(Gerald H. Landau)

Roofs Get Rounder

R10 No. 3184 heads the NY Transit Museum's
"Train of Many Metals", seen here at Sheepshead Bay
on a June 2018 excursion.
(R38R40)

The NYCTA's new A (ex-IRT) and B (ex-BMT and IND) divisions experienced a significant boom in World War II, but following it both were in need of new rolling stock. The first of these, the R10, was built by ACF in 1948 to introduce many new innovations in car construction to New York's railways. The first was an all-welded "low-alloy high tensile) steel construction that made the monocoque (unibody) constructed car lighter than its predecessors, and it was also the first series to introduce dynamic braking (under the "SMEE" system, or "Straight Air-Motor Car-Emergency-Electric", meaning it had a conductor's valve and automatic electric motor braking) and four motors per car, giving it 400 horsepower and a maximum speed of 55 miles per hour. These cars were nicknamed "Thunderbirds" by railfans and motormen alike for their speediness.

The R10s in their 1960s "Bluebird" livery of ivory and turquoise.
(Ed Davis, Sr.)

The sole surviving "Million Dollar Car", No. 8013,
which lives  in the NY Transit Museum Collection.
(Fan Railer)

After the R10 came the R12, which were basically similar but with one important difference: the R10s were 60 feet long to match the IND/BMT standards, while the R12s were built just ten feet shorter to run on the A Division's elevated lines. These 100 cars got their start on the IRT Flushing line and, like their bigger sisters, were originally painted in a handsome two-tone Battleship Grey with orange stripes. In-between these two, but delivered one year later, was the one-off R11 contract by the Budd Company of Philadelphia, PA. Due to run on the long-gestating Second Avenue Subway, these new round-roof cars cost the city of New York $100,000 per car due to their all-stainless steel construction and were known as the "Million Dollar Train" among riders. Interestingly, the ten R11 cars also featured electric doors in place of air-power, a public address system, drum brakes, and "Precipitron" lamps connected to forced-air ventilation in place of ceiling fans. There were supposed to be 400 of these "Million Dollar" cars rolling around, but due to construction halting on the Second Avenue Subway, only 10 were ever delivered.

A sobering interior refit for the R14s and R15s, as seen here in 1967.
The solid plastic seats are to curtail any vandals, but not comfort the passengers.
(Ed Davis Sr.)

A long train of R15s runs on the IRT Flushing Line
at 74th/Broadway in September, 1960.
(Ed Davis, Sr.)

The next series of R-contracts continued to introduce innovation after innovation onto New York's rails. The R14 of 1949, again by ACF, introduced integrated conductor controls in the motorman's cab, transferring the duty of door operation (which was originally done outside the train) inside. However, due to their novelty, they always ran in mixed-stock with other, outside-operated trains. The R15 contract the next year (1950) introduced the more familiar round-roof "turtleback"  shape across a standard class of cars. Both ran on the relatively-stocked IRT Flushing Line, with the R15 introducing the now-familiar porthole windows on the doors. Like the R14, these cars ran on mixed trains outside of the Flushing Line.

A surviving red R17 leads the NY Transit Museum's
"Train of Many Colors" excursion in 2017, stopping over at Court Square.
(R38R40)

The R17s of 1954, this time contracted under St. Louis Car Company of St. Louis, MO, introduced the now-iconic maroon paint scheme across the fleet, and were brought in to replace the IRT Hi-V stock which were now pushing over 40 years old. 400 cars were delivered to New York between 1955 and 1956, with ten cars of the second order being fitted with experimental air conditioners that never really worked. These were popularly known as "Flat bottoms" due to the single box under the car that now housed the switch group, resistor grids, and propulsion control equipment. Unfortunately, this also meant that packing all of the electrical gear into one box made for a lot of heat.

Redbirds of a Feather

R36 No. 5537 leads a "1" train on the NYCTA "A"
Division, absolutely covered with graffiti. The date
is September 1973, while the paint scheme is from 1968.
(Public Domain)

Let's talk about paint schemes for a moment. While the R17s introduced what would eventually be known as the "redbird" colors, the standard scheme at the time was a bright blue with silver lining commonly referred to as the "Bluebird" Scheme. Cars such as the 1959 R26 and 1960 R28 of the ACF and St . Louis Car's 1960 R27, 1962 R29, 1961 R30/A, 1962 R33 and R33-S, and the 1963 R36 were all originally outshopped this way, until being repainted in the 1970s into a much more subdued silver with a dark blue stripe under the windows. Unfortunately, this scheme had the tendency to attract graffiti artists, and by the late 70s and early 80s almost every R-type operating in New York City was tagged with spray-paint.

A special 2000 excursion down to Coney Island,
led by "Redbird" 9312.
(Dave Pirmann)

David L. Gunn, a SEPTA General Manager who was known President of the NYCTA, decided to take it upon himself to solve the graffiti problem, by giving the cars a paint job in all new, un-graffitiable paint. Dubbed "Gunn Red" or "Broad Street Red", the maroon shade was applied to the outsides of the cars and might have actually done their job, as the special paint made it easy to wash graffiti off the cars. The cars were eventually dubbed "Redbirds" by the public, and became an icon of New York's skylines at the time. Sixteen R17s, the ones who originated the color, did not survive long to enjoy the moniker, as after being repainted in 1985/86, they were retired in 1988. 

All's Fair at the Fair

Like-new R33-S cars wait for their tired passengers to ship home during the 1964-65 World's Fair.
The famous Shea Stadium, which would be home to 55,600 screaming girls watching some rock band
in March 1965, is seen in the background.)
(Bill Cotter)

A 1964 Subway map featuring
the new World's Fair cars.
(NYCSubway.org)

One special class of car to come out in the 1960s was the R33-S from St. Louis Car Company, which were originally built in 1963. These cars were known as the "World's Fair" cars and ran on the very busy IRT Flushing Line to serve the 1964 World's Fair at Flushing Meadows. Despite being the same as their R33 counterparts, the cars featured curved-corner windows along the sides and were made to run in huge 11-car sets. With its bright turquoise "Bluebird" paint scheme and shining space-modern NYCTA drumhead logo on the sides, the 44-person-capacity cars ran the 51,607,307 visitors to and from the World's Fair from its opening in 1964 to the last day in 1965. 

When the World's Fair was over, the cars were eventually repainted into the standard "silver-and-blue" scheme elaborated above, but this just attracted more graffiti artists. Unlike the Redbirds, however, the R33-S cars were dressed in a bright white Teflon-based paint that repelled graffiti. However, filth could still stick onto the paint and ruin the cars' good looks, so even the World's Fair cars succumbed to the Redbird Scheme like their mates. 

A like-new R33S gets ticker-tape treatment as it rides along
during the 1964 New York City Labor Day parade.
(NYCSubway.org)

I will also admit I am biased to the R33-S and its beautiful World's Fair Bluebird Scheme and that's why it gets its own segment in my report. It's simply just a beautiful subway car with a beautiful scheme.

Steel Gives Way to Stainless

R38 No. 3998 creeps into 190th Street/Overlook Terrace
just a few months before retirement in September 2007.
(David Pirmann)

To keep this report short, I will briefly mention that most, if not all New York Subway Cars introduced after 1971 are still in service, so I'll be restricting this report to just retired cars. After all, that's a story for another time. What can be told is just what was innovated with those last retired cars. The R38, the first cars built following the World's Fair, were the second stainless steel production cars for the subway (after the R32) but also the first "married-pair" subway cars since the BMT Class MS "Multi-Section" cars of 1934. As a welcome relief to New Yorkers, the R38s also featured for the first time, a proper air-conditioning system that worked. When they went into service with A/C on July 19, 1967, most of the city breathed a sigh of cooled-off relief. 

The striking, almost-too-futuristic R40 "Slant" works
an F train service during an unknown year.
(Doug Grotjahn)

The R38 was then followed up by the R40, which had the honor of being designed by legendary industrial designer Raymond Loewy. Its slanted front end made it look more forward-thinking than its slab-fronted predecessors, but they still shared the same "married pair" permanent coupling and stainless steel bodywork. However, this slanted front end raised more concerns of passenger safety crossing between the cars (which Raymond Loewy objected to anyway, as he didn't want any passage in the first place). Even with the changes, the 400-or-so cars remained in peak operation, with only the occasional mishap affecting them. Loewy was forever bitter that the NYCTA ruined his design in the name of safety. 

The R40 later after front-end rebuilding, with a cumbersome protective gate assembly.
(Bishop71701)

The R42 when new, showing off its sleek and sophisticated lines.
(NY Transit Museum)

After this, in 1969, the R42 finished off the last of NYCTA's retired R-Contract Fleet. It was, again, technologically similar to its predecessors but featured solid-state converters in place of the traction motor-generator unit used up to that point. They were built to replace the last of the BMT A/B and D "Triplex" Standards working all over the system, and ended up being the last of the BMT 60-foot length cars as well as the last "married pair" unit for New York. 

 

The State of the Art Car

One last retired car worth mentioning is the "State of the Art Car" (SOAC), a joint venture between St. Louis Car Company (then in its death throes as its streetcar business was all gone and it was struggling to adapt) and the US Department of Transportation's Urban Mass Transit Administration. Constructed in 1972, its aim was to create a unified rapid transit car that took all the best features of existing cars as well as being adaptable to any system. It was smooth, it was enormous, it was quiet, and it was most of all safe. As testing of the SOAC wore on between 1972 and 1974, the car ended up visiting the New York Subway and ran revenue services from May 17 to July 19, 1974 on the "A", "D", "E", and "N" services. According to the New York Times, many Gothamites were absolutely terrified of the new train: 

The SOAC at 57th Street and Sixth Avenue, being admired by two curious riders.
(Associated Press, Ron Frehm)

During demonstrations last week on the A line, countless straphangers stared in disbelief when the new train breezed into their stations. Many riders seemed afraid to get on, and some of them decided to wait for another train.

“I don't believe it!” And just plain “Wow!” were the most frequent reactions among those with enough courage to walk into a car, “This can't be New York City!” said one man.

The "State of the Art Car" today, undergoing restoration at the Seashore Trolley Museum.
If you would like to contribute to its eventual operation, please follow this link.
(Manabu Kodai)

After testing in other cities like Boston, Cleveland, and Chicago, where the train was met with considerably warmer reception, the two-of-a-kind SOAC cars was stored at Boeing Vertol until May 1979. In 1989, the one-of-a-kind set was donated to the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, ME, where it is today undergoing a slow cosmetic restoration.

It's a Numbers Game

Before we close off with a list of survivors, you may be wondering why I've skipped a few numbers. Well, the answer is pretty simple: the skipped numbers were either work vehicles or (in the case of the R2 and R3 contracts), the missing numbers were "motor packages" that were, at my best guess, traction motor packages for unpowered R1 or R4 cars. I am open to correction on this. Hopefully that does put to rest in your mind that I didn't purposefully skip over almost all of the R-types, just a few. Anyway...

Survivors

Two of almost 2,500 decommissioned NYCTA subway cars lie
just off the coast of South Carolina as part of "Redbird Reef".
(Robert Martore)

Most of the retired IND and NYCTA fleet were sent off for scrap starting in the late 1950s, but into the 2000s, NYCTA began dumping scrapped Redbird cars off various coastlines including Delaware, South Carolina, New Jersey, and Virginia. This initiative, which began in 2003 after the final Redbird car run, was known as the Redbird Reefs and had the noble intentions of providing more reef space to build undersea flora and coral, as well as serving as wave barriers and recreational diving areas.

The New York Transit Museum's famous "Train of Many Colors", with surviving
World's Fair car No. 9306 leading many ex-NYCTA cars wearing some of their original schemes.
(Adam E. Moreira)

The cars that didn't get dumped can now be found all over the Northeastern United States, with 21 IND cars and well over 100 NYCTA R-type cars either surviving in museums or rebuilt as work cars. The largest collection is (again) at the well-comprehensive New York Transit Museum in New York, NY. They own 26 R-type cars, including the only surviving R33-S "World's Fair" car, the only surviving R11 which I now declare is "The Million Dollar Car" and the first R1, No. 100. Railway Preservation Corp, which also handles NYCTA excursions, owns a significant and operable segment of the original Arnines (8 of them), while other cars have found odder homes elsewhere.

Redbird R28s run with poles at the IRM.
(Bob Vogel)

Ex-IND R6 No. 1144 at its old location at the
Buckinghamshire Railway Centre.

For example, a married pair of ex-NYCTA "Redbird" R28s, No. 7926 and 7927, now live at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, IL. Much like their other 3rd-rail brethren, the cars have been converted to run off a trolley pole and are operated occasionally. Three other IND "Arnine" cars also live at the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, ME, with R4 No. 800 and R7 No. 1440 said to be operable while R1 No. 175 is being used for spare parts. 

The oddest location for a subway car has to be ex-IND R6 No. 1144, which is now at the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre in England, being used as a cafeteria after it was purchased by a Northern English brewery. According to the BRC, even the New York Transit Museum was shocked that it survived as it was listed as "scrapped" in September 1978. Another "Arnine" that was used as a food stand was R6 No. 9678, which originally served as a dining room for Golden's Deli in the Staten Island Mall. The car has since passed into private ownership. 

Thank you for reading today's Trolley post, and watch your step as you alight on the platform. Honestly, I've only barely begun to scratch the surface on the many different car types of the NYCTA, but I hope I've at least been informative enough! My resources today is thanks to NYCsubway.org which can basically tell you all I've jut told you, but better, as well as the Seashore Trolley Museum of Kennebunkport, ME, Illinois Railway Museum of Union, IL, and the New York Transit Museum of New York, NY. The subway gifs in our posts are made by Brian Clough and can be found on his site, Banks of the Susquehanna. On Tuesday, who knows what comes next? I may have a little surprise for y'all! For now, you can follow myself or my editor on Twitter, buy a shirt or sticker from our Redbubble stand, or purchase my editor's self-developed board game! It's like Ticket to Ride, but cooler! (and you get to support him through it!) Until next time, ride safe!