Saw some older-than-R32 stock running on the D today...

[supermop]

Not sure how many NYCT followers we have around here, but I saw a pretty weird sight this afternoon at Broadway-Lafayette. I was on an uptown C (terminating at 2nd Ave. today due to construction), and as we were pulling out of the station, I saw a train of old cars pulling into the downtown express track. I couldn't get a very good look at it, but the windows looked like those of R16s or R17s. It also seemed to be made up of uniform cars, not the mixed special holiday train that runs in December. Was full of regular passengers, not a work train.

Anyway, does anyone know anything about this? I didn't see any announcements of a special historic train, and I cannot think of any special events along the D route this weekend to warrant such a train. I also find it had to believe that the MTA has that many pre-stainless cars of one make in working order, and if it was being pressed into service out of necessity, there are plenty of newer, in service or recently retired cars that would be available to run instead. It wasn't running at a particully high volume time either (12:30).

Best,

[ostlandr]

Yep, the MTA really is scraping the bottom of the barrel for cars. Looks like the MTA is so strapped they're wishing they hadn't sunk all those other old cars as artificial reefs:

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?secti ... id=7616092

[supermop]

Yeah, keeping the A and C stock makes sense, as it is still pretty servicable. The stock i saw that day was definately pre r32 though, which is wierd because there are all sorts of stainless cars just sitting in the yard at rockaway park, some of which were running just a year or so ago (slant-fronts)