Redbirds Sing Their Last Song
Newsday reports on the "contrived" lamentations of the death of the Redbirds, the all-steel, U.S.-built trains that are finally being retired from NY:
The occasion was the retirement of the last of the all-steel cars called "Redbirds," the backbone of the New York subway fleet for more than 40 years but now the victims of a $2 billion upgrade program that includes modern stainless steel cars with digital signs and other features.
"Even for those of us who tend to be nostalgic, the retirement of the Redbirds has a lot more bearing on the future than the past," said Peter Kalikow, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
Officials said about 100 of the original 1,400 Redbirds will stay in service as work trains and a few will go to the city's Transit Museum, but most are destined to be sold off and sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean along the East Coast to create artificial reefs for marine life.
The Redbirds were the last subway cars built in the United States, by the former St. Louis Car Co., in Missouri. The latest cars are built in Canada with some parts from France and elsewhere.
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"Redbird" Train #9014
Courtesy NYCSubway.org |
As Newsday points out, there isn't a lot of nostalgia for the old cars. Their passing does provide some opportunity for reflection on the loss of the US transit producers, however. Most train cars are now produced in Canada or Europe, and it's not a market the U.S. seems eager to pick up. To me, it's less important that the U.S. be producing these cars than it is for us to make sure we're using cars, but it would be nice if we could see some of the subsidy money that the United States pours into other industries being used to support train design and manufacturing here.
Post Author:
amg | 07:59 PM |
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Well, I'm a little nostalgic. Sure, the AC wasn't that great, and they had a tendency to stink just a little more than newer cars, but they had advantages. First of all, the bench seats were always cleaner then the semi-bucket seats on the 1980s cars, something they learned when they released the new models a few years ago.
