MHV9218

32 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Yeah because money doesn't grow on trees. We're running up massive amounts of debt to provide "stimulus". The  got $4 billion in early Spring, every dollar they asked for and fairly quickly too. Now they're asking for $12 billion, and that only covers them for 2021. What happens after that? Do they get MORE money? That's $16 billion in less than two years. Let's not pretend that their financial situation was so great pre-COVID, because prior to the pandemic, NYC was seeing record amounts of money coming in, and they were still struggling to manage their fiscal situation.

So yes, we should be mindful about how we are spending when record deficits are being run up. 

Don't even come here with that unbelievable bullshit about debt and the deficit after Trump's $5.5 trillion, 'T', with a 'T,' TRILLION tax cut corporate giveaway. Then don't even try it with his record levels of giveaways to farmers in red states (about $50 billion this election year), his colossally stupid tariff plan, or the billion-plus he's funneled to his idiotic wall.

Your guy sat in office for four years running up the debt to unheard-of levels while cutting taxes on the rich and corporations, and the minute he's out of office everybody's a budget hawk and you want to preach about the MTA's finances, as if you have any idea what on earth you're talking about. 

It's pretty simple: if they don't get bailed out, the New York City economy as we know it (only the major economic engine of the entire Eastern seaboard) is permanently crippled. You have no idea what you're talking about and you're trotting out a completely hypocritical argument about deficits after looking the other way for four years.

Miss me with this. 

Well, the good news is that Biden is our president and we have a chance some Republicans will grow a spine and make the moral and sensible economic choice to pass a stimulus bill and save our country from complete economic collapse. They haven't been interested in passing anything so far, because they couldn't care less about the well-being of Americans, but hopefully now that the pressure is on and Trump is out of office.

Cause otherwise... bye bye MTA, bye bye economy, bye bye most state budgets around the country.

20 minutes ago, trainfan22 said:

A flexible New Look with slightly different window specs? 

More than slightly...that thing is bizarre. Non-sliding upright windows almost like on the RTS demo. Prolly a GM also.

So what the heck is this?

A few more of the new station entrance signs are being installed at the entrances that were missing signs for the past few months. That probably means that time is running out for those old Akzidenz-Grotesk 80s signs temporarily revealed. I have to check if the new signs are enamel (contractor) or metal (sign shop), but they look professionally done.

19 minutes ago, Reptile said:

I thought they purposely did it, to end the R32s faster, also there was no hope of them ever running on the Broadway line.

The contractors have no idea about anything regarding rolling stock beyond the measurements on the page somebody hands them. So no, not a conspiracy to get rid of the 32s. And while there wasn't 'hope,' there should have been flexibility, in the event of an emergency, so that's why everybody's frustrated by the outcome. Not to mention the lessons learned from the first nostalgia trip that ran through there.

21 minutes ago, Flatbush Operator said:

The SBS 40 ft theme buses are painted. The lower part of the buses  have to be wrap with the Cuomo blue schemes.

Why, in hell, they thought it made sense to make the default paint scheme of the XD40s SBS blue with a blue wrap over it....beyond me.

Funny to see MV lose the 3960 fleet again. They had 3960-3964 for a while, lost them, got hem back with the big NG switch, and now headed to ENY.

8 hours ago, B35 via Church said:

Only packed M8's I've ever seen, were on the Metro North...

8 hours ago, Cait Sith said:

The very last time I can recall seeing packed M8s was back in 2015.....4th of July. That one day of the year is probably the only time I've seen that line packed.

Hey, 5-6pm that route gets totally full! At least Eastbound from 6th till Astor...not so much after. The truth is, the busiest I've ever seen that route was during Sandy, when it was free, and the bus was packed all day since everybody was taking advantage.

I have a photo from some point of a sight you never seen much – 2 or 3 M8s all bunched around 5th Ave. All RTSes...that's a sign that service is a total disaster lmao.

11 minutes ago, BenTheMiner said:

Thank you! Yep, I'm aware of the 1-9 roll and I have the 1-4 exposures for the Standard roll, but I don't have the rest so I won't be able to recreate that one.

Here's a record for you, if the angle doesn't bother you: 

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/nycta-subway-front-route-rollsign-135756131

These were made by American Identification Products, who were generally responsible for some of the more interesting and colorful rollsigns of the 70s and 80s. Spec mentions the R21s but not the R17s, so may be later in the 1980s.

On 10/24/2020 at 4:27 PM, BenTheMiner said:

Here is probably the most accurate rollsign with correct fonts, sizes, and spacing. This is the vertical IRT end route rollsign found on Redbird-class trains. According to the end rollsign readings, this rollsign contract was for the R17, R21, R22, R26, R28, R29, R33, and R36. All of the route bullets are in Neue Haas Grotesk medium, with the express route bullet text being the same size as the circle route bullet text, and the shuttle ("S") route bullet text being just a bit smaller than the rest. The miscellaneous text readings, "Special" and "Not in Service" are in Standard Condensed Bold.

Also, here is the YouTube video reference link (thank you to Some Train Enthusiast):

https://youtu.be/gaiYaoc_U-I

Great work on these as well as the R62A replacements.

There are so many different versions of the redbird front rollsigns. Helvetica bullets are the most common, like you replicated, but there were also Akzidenz-Grotesk bullets, Helvetica/Arial bullets, and eventually the 1-9 addition Helvetica rolls from 1990 or so.

All I'm saying is, this looked better than anything they're running today...

9 hours ago, Around the Horn said:

That livery was never Cuomo's he just accelerated it's rollout (and then spread it to everywhere else)

I'm about 90% sure it was a directive from his office given that it's in the State of NY Excelsior color scheme, which is what he dictated they repaint all the Bridge and Tunnels/TBTA cars in, as well as the new colors for the SAS and other MTA branding. The city's colors are different and the MTA's corporate colors are different too.

Quote

KB already has a few 8500s with mismatched panels and it looks goofy as hell. 100th Street also has a bunch of XD60s with mismatched and/or miscolored panels.

They should've just had the local scheme as the base and the SBS scheme as the wrap altogether, having the SBS scheme as the base in some of these buses was just a terrible idea altogether.

I lowkey miss when the wraps were brand new, they shined real nice in certain areas. I watched one of my videos of 5382 when it was brand new and man, did it look and sound good lol. You can even hear the ZF Ecolife howl as it goes up the hill it goes up via the Q37 route.

See that actually looks clean enough that it could pass as paint. But you're right, that gloss was just when they were new, and now they all have that dull/matte look to them. Only gonna get worse from there too, cause it's not like they can be waxed/I doubt the sun is that good for them.

Agree that I have no idea why the SBS was the base on so many buses. How many SBS routes were they planning on lol?

5 hours ago, Cait Sith said:

My problem with the new scheme is the level of inconsistency it has brought to us, wrap vs paint, missing decals/scheme components, ect. The most telling signs of the inconsistency comes with the hybrids, some buses don't have the white stripe whereas 9500-9509 has them. 9500-9509 doesn't have all of those extra decals plastered all over the bus, whereas 9510/9560 and 0022 will have them.

The wraps, especially on the MTA Bus 5300s are looking quite awful now. Granted, those buses have been out 24/7 since they've arrived, but the wraps aren't aging quite well.

It's terrible, as far as I'm concerned. Buses should be painted, not wrapped. The appearance lifespan of a painted bus is 5-6 years (and even 12-15 if washed and maintained properly like the MCIs, though obviously that's cost-prohibitive for the rest of the system), but the wrapped buses start looking like ass after about a year. Not to mention the replacement panels in different colors, mismatched stripes, etc. What would make sense would be to just paint the buses blue and then use yellow decals, rather than to wrap the entire bus from the windows down like they did for all the XD40s and XD60s. It's a shame we're losing the SBS scheme, because at least you get to see the actual paint on the SBS XD60s and LFSAs, which looks makes them look way better. They could even lose the dumb yellow stripes and just do a nice blue/dark blue look, sort of like what the Fishbowls used to have. 

9 hours ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

I get that, but still surprised anyone would remember such details.

We are all here for your amusement and astonishment. 

5 hours ago, Union Tpke said:

An image from the New York Transit Museum of West 4th Street in 1978 shows signage pointing toward the entrance at West 4th Street. While it is not definitive proof, as the TA could have forgotten to take down the sign, the timing makes sense.

Au contraire. Most of the 70s-80s closures have been slabbed over or replaced by emergency entrances of gratings. The entrances to Washington Place and West 4th lead to the lower mezzanine and are blocked from view by employee spaces, some of which can be removed pretty easily.

The entrance at the SE corner of West 4th was slabbed over in 1999 as part of the renovation of Golden Swan Park, and a portion of the entrance is used as an air vent, while the rest of the space is occupied by a garden. The NW corner entrance was partially covered by a steel trapdoor, with the remainder slabbed over. A ladder has replaced some of the stairs. The entrance to the SW corner of Washington Place is blocked by a trapdoor and used as an emergency exit. The entrance to the SE corner was never actually opened has an easement to a building. The entrance to the SW corner of Greenwich leads to the small West 8th street mezzanine and is in area off of the sidewalk now blocked by plywood.

Interesting sign there – looks like it was hand painted on there. I wonder what the original said. Like I was mentioning, my '32/'36 sign only says 8th Street and 3rd Street, which is funny. Re: the slab over, that's kind of what I meant about the difficult of reopening. But just surprising they would close so late – Greenwich Village was totally bustling in the 1970s, maybe even moreso than today. It's hardly a stop out in East New York or some lengthy scary passageway like the Gimbel's. Maybe the sign was out of date for a while. Even today, when they're more on top of things, West 4th still has signs for the C to the Bronx that are 25 years out of date, and plenty of stations have defunct exists still marked...

Grain of salt, but a commenter on that posts notes that the West 4th exit wasn't there in the 1970s. I've only ever seen photos of the other exits from the 30s and 40s, not from more recent. I watched footage of that stretch of 6th in the late 1960s-early 1970s recently, and can confirm there is no exit visible at West 4th, or Washington Place, or the corner by Greenwich. So my guess is 1950s, if not earlier.

Redditor tuttikanayee put this up. There's the exit, but this is so old the 6th Ave el is up.

31 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

These things are so non-important in the overall scheme of things, and so they get to them whenever. The primary focus is always making service. Everything else is secondary.  I'd rather have a clean bus than some sticker.

Nobody disagrees.

6707 had an Amsterdam sticker for the longest until it got repainted. 6659 had an MCH sticker for ages, which was funny since the bus was never at MCH, just did a little press event for the opening there. Manhattanville is famously slow when it comes to stickers. Of all the RTS loaners over the years post-2010, it was only 5064 that ever got a sticker. And some of those buses (like 9574) were there for months.

5 minutes ago, trainfan22 said:

Like 10+ years ago, QV had them when new then UP got them in like 09, stayed at Ulmer for a few years then they went to SI where they've been ever since.

Word, I knew it had to have been a minute. Reminds me you that the MCIs never get repainted, so anything can show up on the decal stickers...

One of the Manhattanville transfers, I want to say 4260, has a Castleton sticker showing. That's a few years back as well.

4311 has a QV sticker showing on the passenger side. When were those buses last at QV?

6 minutes ago, R10 2952 said:

Late '70s as the date of closure seems about right; the Lower West Side was considered a shitty place to be in those days, especially after dark.

But the area's a lot better now, and you would think with all the crowding around entrances that happens at that station (or did before the current situation anyway), they'd at least consider reopening the stairs to West 4th.

"MTA- going our own damn way".

I feel like it must have been earlier. There's not even a trace of those street entrances. Most of the 70s-80s closures the whole stairwell/kiosk is still there, and there's something than can be reopened fairly easily. There's nothing at West 4th.

34 minutes ago, trainfan22 said:

Well, growing up as an 90s baby in Brooklyn, if you was into the bus side of this hobby you had no choice but to like the RTS as that's all BK had until JG got C40s, I still remember being excited about orginal C40s when they debuted.

JG had about 30 or so Orion Vs since the mid 90s until 2010 or so but they was VERY rare, I never saw one in my elementary years back then. 

I remember playing ball down at the Red Hook fields, back when every single bus JG had was a DD50 lmao. It was C40 after C40, eventually the O7 CNGs started coming in, but I really remember the C40s and the occasional high floor bus, which looking back was an O5 CNG. That was the B61 passing and those engines used to absolutely roar. Really changed the sound of half of Brooklyn when JG lost its last DD50.

4 hours ago, Union Tpke said:

@RR503 Do you have anything to add about ATS?

@4P3607

I do have some historic pics of the NW corner West 4th entrance, but am still looking for images of the SE corner entrance. You have to zoom in:

https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dc-f600-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 (1935)

http://nycma.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/detail/NYCMA~5~5~177277~495798 (c. 1940)

Here are some photos of closed entrances at West 4th Street from public areas:

http://indsecondsystem.weebly.com/west-4th-st.html

Based on my research, the entrances at West 4th Street closed c.1978.

While there are some station diagrams I have access to that I can't publicly share, there is one that is already on the web that shows the Lower Platform and Mezzanine:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NY/05000223.pdf#page=16

For more information on the closed entrances at West 4th and around the system, check out my list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kew_Gardens_613/List_of_closed_New_York_City_Subway_entrances

Here is a snippet from it about a never opened entrance at the Southeastern corner of Washington Place and Sixth Avenue to the lower mezzanine, Stair S5. Space partially occupied by police room. The portion of the mezzanine in front of the entrance is used by the Structure D Night Force. Control Area N081. Entrance partially constructed along with the station, but never opened. A small shed at street level had protected the entrance, which included a stairwell and an unused escalator well. In 1952, the property above the entrance easement was sold, along with the easement, with the understanding that the owner would provide a concrete slab to protect the entrance.

If you have any more questions about these entrances or any other, let me know.

 

These are great! Had never seen all of these shots. Nice to see the 2004 shots with the 1990s enamel signs still hanging – yellow 'Transfer' module, the sticker still covering the BDFQ transfer. One of those signs still survives on the lower level, where it refers to the ACE to Uptown, the Bronx, and Queens (you can tell how out of date that is). They may have covered that since, though...a few new signs installed there recently. And amusingly the main Waverly entrance currently shows one of the 90s enamel signs with the BDFQ, albeit with a sticker for the V.

11 hours ago, 4P3607 said:

But West 4th DID used to have an actual entrance at West 4th Street. (Wish someone had more info on this + historical pics)

You're right, just being cheeky! Been gone a looooong time though.

3 minutes ago, Future ENY OP said:

Historical Roster from Fresh Pond. Circa 2006/2007. They were briefly at Fresh Pond before moving to Amsterdam & MQ.  

Who knew! I have no recollection of that, but I guess I wasn't paying attention to the OGs then. Too many RTSes to care about. Those buses must have been just about brand new then. 

12 minutes ago, Future ENY OP said:

I believe they briefly had 6737-6739. Check one of the archive rosters. 

When was that? I thought those were Amsterdam-Quill buses through and through.