New York City Flashback: The Transit Museum

From Dave Brigham:

Recently this thought struck me like a runaway freight train: I visited New York City three times between 2010 and 2016 and I didn't post anything about my trips!

Only in more recent years have I become obsessed with chronicling places in Greater Boston and cities that I visit on vacation (Seattle, Chicago, Panama City). As well, I've gotten much better at editing my photos in that time. What that means is a) there aren't as many photos in this and future NYC posts as you might expect and b) those photos aren't always as good as I'd like them to be.

Anyway, I dug through my archives, found a bunch of useable photos, and decided to post whatever the blog equivalent of latergrams is. There will be four posts in total in the coming weeks.

This first post is about two visits my wife, kids and I made to the New York Transit Museum. Located in a circa-1936 subway station in Brooklyn, the museum was founded in 1976 and is a self-supporting division of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The museum’s "working platform level spans a full city block, and is home to a rotating selection of twenty vintage subway and elevated cars dating back to 1907," per its web site.

We went to the museum because, as regular readers of the blog know, my son, Owen, loves subways. He and I have gone on countless trips on Boston's MBTA system over the years. He absolutely loved the NYC museum, as well as riding the MTA system during our three vacations in the Big Apple. I thoroughly enjoyed watching him tromp around inside the cars, hang from the hand straps, make mental notes about each car and their features. I had a great time at the museum, too. On one of our trips there, we met up with my brother, his then-wife and their two kids, as well as my sister.

Side note: my mother grew up in Brooklyn, so it was cool to be just a few miles from her childhood home. Someday I hope to visit her neighborhood in East Flatbush.

OK, let's see what we saw.

According to this Flickr post, the car above is a BMT D-Type Triplex Car, #6095. It was manufactured in 1927 by the Pressed Steel Car Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The R-11 Prototype / R-34 Car No. 8013, below, dates to 1949.

From the museum's web site:

"In anticipation of the construction of the Second Avenue subway, the city ordered 10 trial R-11 cars. When a model of the car — equipped with a host of innovations and stainless steel construction — was unveiled to the press The New York Times described it as “The car of tomorrow.” Because of the $100,000 price tag for each car, the R-11 was also called “The Million Dollar Train.” Unfortunately, the “car of tomorrow” never went into full service operation and additional R-11 cars were never ordered. Because the cars could not be readily used with other R types, they were rebuilt to be compatible with existing cars under contract R-34 in 1964-1965."

I've learned from Owen how common it it for subway cars to be ordered, manufactured and delivered to spec, only to require changes to certain components. Happens regularly with the MBTA. I love the interior of this train, especially the vintage ads (which may be reproductions).

In addition to the vintage train cars on the tracks, the old buses, and rotating displays on the upper floor about the system and its history and equipment, I dug the random details, like the collection of wicker seats, below.

I'm not sure the story behind the train car below, the interior of which looks like a hospital ship waiting room.

One of the cooler things in the museum, as far as Owen was concerned, is the tracking map below.

Since he was little, he has loved maps and figuring out how systems connect. On our trips to NYC, he guided us around via subway and never made a mistake. We would tell him where we were going, and he would look it up on a map (or, later, his phone) and figure out what subway line we needed to take. We would question him -- are you sure this is a local, and not an express train? -- and he confidently told us he knew what he was doing. And so he did.

And now for a few random shots taken as we walked the streets near the museum, heading for a subway train that would actually take us somewhere.

Located roughly a block away from the transit museum, on Livingston Street, the New Apollo Diner appears to be a typical New York diner, with about 8,000 items on the menu. We didn't eat here.

Empire Bail Bonds is also right around the corner from the transit museum. This location of the business is also, as the web site points out, "conveniently located one block away from Brooklyn Criminal Court."

I don't recall exactly where in Brooklyn I took this photo. I love the juxtaposition of the walking guy and the biker with the retro helmet.

Make sure to check back for three more New York posts, covering some cool old buildings, some shots taken in Upper Manhattan and Harlem from a double-decker tour bus, and photos from the High Line.