farewell r-46

According to an article in Gothamist, the R-46 subway car is set to be replaced starting next year. The article, which is here, isn't really a news item about the impending retirement. It's more a reminiscence about the iconic cars.

I have mixed feelings about the news (which, I admit, is more than most people would have; most people wouldn't care at all). I took the subway to high school. For most of that time the R-46's, which were the newest cars in the fleet, were being used on the E and F lines. As an aside, they were running R-10's on the LL so my morning commute included both the oldest and newest cars in the fleet. The 46's offered a smoother, quieter ride than the other trains that were being used at the time. I guess most other passengers preferred that, but I was a bit too much of a railfan, and I wanted to feel that I was on a subway train.

The R-46 (and the R-44 which was very similar) were a big change from the cars that preceded them. Most notably, they were 75 feet long. Before them, the longest cars the system had ever used were the 67-foot AB Standards, the last of which were retired in 1969. Other cars being used at the time  on the IND and BMT lines were 60 feet long. In preparation for using longer cars, the Transit Authority had to run extended probe trains to see where curves were too tight, and excavate extra tunnel. I wouldn't be surprised if there are still some old BMT tunnels that can't accomodate these trains.

As a consequence of the cars' length, the doors at either end were kept locked for safety. It was felt that the gap was too dangerously wide when the train went around curves. Now people couldn't coross from one car to another in search of seats (or to escape the homeless and insane). Also, it was no longer possible to simply ride between cars -- which is something I used to enjoy doing when the cars were very crowded. Don't tell my mom. Because the doors were locked, these cars didn't have the protective gates that extended the sides between cars. That made them look more attractive, but advocates for the blind objected that they represented a hazzard -- blind people could mistake the space for doors and get killed. I don't know the details of how that dispute went, but the gates were never installed, so I can draw some conclusions.

Inside, the trains brought back transverse seating. Instead of the seats being simple benches along the sides of the cars, these had some seats facing forward and some facing backward. That created more seating, but reduced the total capacity. FWIW, the transverse seats on the R-46s were better than the ones n the R-44s because of the armrests. In the R-44s the arm rests were cut out of the wall but had overhangs, making them uncomfortable. On the R-46's there weren't overhangs. So they didn't look as cool but were more comfortable.

One feature that railfans hated (but that motormen probably loved) was the enlarged cab. Until then, the cabs were relatively small and cramped. That left room for doors to cross through and (more to this point) stand at and look out of. Railfans loved to stand at the front of the train and look out the front window as the world whooshed by. With the R-46's car-width cabs, you couldn't do that anymore. And that change seems to have been carried over to the newer cars -- even though other changes such as transverse haven't been reproduced in more recent models.

The bottom line? I never cared for the R-46s. But a part of me feels bad about the dissapearance of another part of my youth.