NEW YORK — The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s New York Transit Museum is offering true trips into the past, bringing back vintage subway car rides after a two-year, pandemic-related absence.
Three “Nostalgia Ride” trips are scheduled, featuring rides on routes of the MTA’s three predecessor lines, some of the on the exact lines those subway systems began on originally.
The first rides occur with two trips using century-old ‘Low Voltage’ or ‘Lo-Vs’ cars on Saturday, June 4th, at 9:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. Each trip departs from the vintage South Ferry loop platform for a round trip on the Dyre Avenue or White Plains line and back. The cars were built a century ago.
The second trip, Sunday, July 10, is to Coney Island’s Stillwell Avenue terminal and patrons will be able to traverse the famous boardwalk with the R 1-9 cars during a mid-trip break for the return trip to the Transit Museum. The train will ride on the BMT (Brooklyn Manhattan Transit) lines. The train departs at 10 a.m. from the New York Transit Museum.
The third and final excursion is set for Saturday, Aug. 13, to the Rockaways. The trip originates from the 96th Street-Second Avenue station in Manhattan at 10 a.m., traveling to Rockaway Park-Beach 116th Street terminal in Queens. It rides the Independent (or IND) A line to 175th Street in Manhattan.
Tickets are $60 for adults, $40 for children; for New York Transit Museum members, prices are $40 for adults and $30 for children. To purchase tickets or for more information, visit the transit museum website.
I rode these cars on a ERA charter after 9/11 and they were great. Hats off to the crews that maintain and operate them. So many fond memories.
Having done this; it is a blast; people dress in period costumes; dance on the platforms to impromptu live music groups. The transit museum itself is worth a day; outstanding. People can criticize the MTA, but hard to argue with a system that is back up to 3.5 million weekday fares, not counting the estimated 10% fare beaters