Come on ride the train, and ride it

Despite what people say about the MTA, they did something fun in the month of December. Every Sunday, antique train cars were run on the V line between 2nd Ave and Queens.



What fun, it reminded me of visiting Greenfield Village in Detroit! One of the first things that you notice is how stinky the old trains were. I've been known to complain about other smells in the subway, but the diesel smelling exhaust filling the 2nd Ave train platform was quite strong. Inside the train car, I was most curious to see the old advertisements-- ads for NATO, war bonds and Grape Nuts were among my favorites. I was interested to see that wicker seats were bouncy and a good 20% smaller than today's plastic ones. The other surprise was the ventilation system-- open windows and ceiling fans.




The added bonus was watching the perplexed faces of the tourists at each station who were not expecting train cars from the 1930s-70's to pull up. Only in New York kids:-)