Normally, rides on this classic equipment are done by special arrangement. The cost you ask? It's free when you've already paid your fare to enter the system. HBO hired the MTA to operate the train to promote the TV show. All you have to do is show up and ride!
The logical question is how did these cars survive almost a hundred years? The answer is through the passion and desire of railfans to save the equipment back in the 1960s as the scrapper's torch was about to hit them. Frank Turdik was a transit employee in the early 60s that loved the cars and managed to hide them with some help, evade the 'grim reaper' of the person in charge of scrapping all the 'Lo-V' cars. It's too long a story for this blog right now, but maybe I'll get to it some day.
Frank Turdik stashed an entire 10-car train of Low-Vs on a lay-up track near the Pelham Parkway station on the Dyre Avenue (#5) line. When one of the MTA's big bosses in charge of scrapping the old cars finally figured out that this little stretch of track was the only place he hadn't checked for the ten missing Low-Vs on his roster, he made the mistake of letting a good friend of Frank's know, "I'm off to the Dyre Avenue Tunnel." The friend immediately contacted Frank, who went and hid that train of Low Vs in the back of the East 180th Street Yard, and replaced it in the tunnel with a 10-car consist if R-17s (among the newest cars in the IRT fleet at the time). Ironically, a few years after the Low-Vs were officially retired from passenger service, Frank heard from somebody how that same big boss lamented there were none of them left. Frank called him and said, "Meet me at the 207th Street Yard this afternoon." There, to everyone's surprise, arrived Frank in a 5-car consist of his beloved Low-Vs, fully restored and entirely under its own power! This very train still serves today as one of the MTA's "Museum Trains." As for the other five cars, they've all survived in the system's "Track & Structures" division, carrying tools and supplies around for the maintenance personnel.
ReplyDelete