Up in the Bronx, there’s a subway graveyard. I was up there once for some event, had some time to kill, and hung out on the overpass, looking down at the train-car carnage. On Instagram, I follow a lot of photographers who seek out abandoned sites – places like Chernobyl (just one example) – sometimes at great risk. The photographs they get are often incredible. (There’s one feed devoted entirely to “abandoned Detroit” – a sad commentary, but still: the photographs are haunting and beautiful). These subway trains are out to pasture. It doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility that someone could wave a magic wand and get them back into operation. The city sure needs it, I’ll tell you that. One of the weirdest things about this past year – so weird that I didn’t even really allow myself to LOOK at it until a couple months in: I never went into the city anymore. I haven’t been on a subway since early March 2020. It hurts my heart.
I love subways and trains. One of my favorite parts of our trip to NYC in November 2015 was reading Farran Nehme’s MISSING REELS on my phone on the PATH train to and from Jersey City several times a day. Going underground, getting on a train, emerging someplace else completely a few minutes later? That’s a kind of magic. I even loved the long corridors down to the trains, the businesses down there, an entire world unto itself. Even that big breeze that hits the platform from the trains compressing the air in the tunnels ahead of them is a part of the allure!
It’s not just NYC’s subways, either! Boston’s and Toronto’s are lovely. Some newer trains in Toronto are open the entire length of the train, which can really mess with your head when you are at the back end and the front end gets to a curve first. Toronto’s subways are part of a larger “underground city” that is one of that city’s most interesting features.
(Buffalo has a single-line subway that was built in a MUCH more optimistic time, thirty-five or so years ago, when people still thought the city might turn around what was then a pretty recent population decline. It has not come to pass, sadly.)
Kelly – what a great memory of MISSING REELS!!
Boston does have great public trains – Chicago’s L is awesome too – I lived there without a car for 5 years and could get anywhere I needed to with very little fuss.
so Toronto – what do you mean, they’re open the whole length of the train? so … there are no individual cars? I’m trying to picture it.