Historic NYC Subway Cars Make Last Ride After 50 Years

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK — A line of old friends snaked their way up and down the A line for the last time after 50 years of service.

Those friends — the classic R-42 subway cars — completed their final run on Wednesday, drawing onlookers on subway platforms across three boroughs and carloads of nostalgic passengers.

"It means a lot to people," said Sterlin Tejada, a photographer on the ride as it passed through Brooklyn. "The train has been part of New York for a half century."

They've completed thousands of trips up, down and across New York City in their 50 years. They gave New Yorkers their first taste of full air conditioning — at a full arctic blast, one passenger griped Wednesday.

Movie buffs might know the R-42 from the classic chase scene in The French Connection where Gene Hackman's character Popeye Doyle chased — by automobile — after a would-be assassin who hopped onto the subway.

All that history closed Wednesday as passengers crowded onto the train making all stops between 207th Street in Inwood and Far Rockaway in Queens. They'll soon be replaced by the new R-160 fleet, according to the MTA.

Serge Zenisek, a teacher at a Bushwick charter school, spent his lunch break waiting for the R-42s to pull into Broadway Junction station.

He eagerly snapped photos as A train after A train arrived and left, but not the fabled final ride. Finally, when he just about gave up hope, the cars arrived.

"The subway is the lifeblood of the city so we have to say goodbye to those that served us well," Zenisek said.

Inside the cars the atmosphere felt like a bittersweet celebration. Some passengers only learned the ride's significance when they stepped onto the train.

"Fifty years is a mighty long time to ride these rails," a MTA announcement on the train said.

Tejada clutched two cameras — a DSLR and a point-and-shoot — as the train breezed out of Broadway Junction. Growing up in Sunset Park, he knows he's rode the cars all his life.

He wanted to remember them and photograph them before they left the city's subways forever.

"Appreciate everything that is here now because sooner or later it will be gone," he said. "That's what drives me to take photographs."

Nearby stood Anthony Maimone with his own swirl of cameras.

Maimone knows the cars better than most. He's a MTA conductor with a deep interest in subway history and whose phone is filled with photographs of subway cars.

It's how he can pinpoint the last day he worked on a R-42: Jan. 14. The photograph shows him sticking his head out the conductor's window.

"It's sad because we're losing an old friend," Maimone said.

The first R-42s numbered 4554 and 4555 rolled out onto the N line in 1969, Maimone said. They were the first order of cars with full air conditioning, he said.

But they also counted as the last NYC cars built by St. Louis Car Company in Missouri and the last ones that came in married pairs, Maimone said.

Many of them were retired between 2006 and 2009, according to the MTA. Some of those were dumped in the ocean to make artificial reefs — Maimone remembers seeing them sail off on barges to be sunk beneath the waves.

About 50 cars remained in service until recently on the J and Z lines, according to the MTA.

Two remaining R-42s will be exhibited at the New York Transit Museum, which held a send off on Wednesday for the final ride.

More information about the cars and the ride can be found here. Tejada's photographs can be seen at his Instagram account @americanmartian.