In its previous incarnation, Car RD340 kept straphangers moving as one of the distinctive “Redbirds” that for years made up part of the subway fleet on the numbered lines.
On Sunday, the once-red but now dull-yellow car will be back to keeping riders moving in a different form — as an MTA work train spraying de-icer liquid on the third rail during a winter storm that could wallop the city with more than a foot of snow.
“We’re going to be ready and we’re determined to maintain service,” Janno Lieber, MTA chairperson and chief executive, vowed Friday morning at the Laurelton stop on the Long Island Rail Road. “We’ve done it again and again and again and we’re on duty to deliver for New Yorkers.”
New York City Transit’s de-icers currently in use — six for the subway, one for the Staten Island Railway — make up a lesser-seen part of the fleet: repurposed subway cars that keep the power-supplying third rail from icing. Six of the cars were converted in the early 1990s, according to the MTA.
Their recycled role is in clear contrast to other old subway cars that were junked or sunk in order to become artificial reefs.
“Of course, it’s a second life,” said Ravi Ganpat, a general superintendent for New York City Transit’s Maintenance of Way division.
Transit officials on Friday showcased a de-icer car stocked with 11 barrels containing 605 gallons of fluid at a Brooklyn subway yard ahead of a snowstorm that has the MTA in an all-hands-on-deck mode. The car — rusted in spots, but still fully functional after decades on the tracks — is equipped with specially made devices that scrape ice off the third rail, then spray it with fluid.
“We try to send the de-icer trains normally before precipitation because we want to treat the rails and get some of the fluid onto the rails so we stop freezing” Ganpat said. “And then during the storm, we keep going, following the passenger trains and treating the rails as the storm goes by.”
For snow and ice removal as well as systemwide emergency response, New York City Transit’s fleet includes 55 diesel locomotives and 39 rider cars to transport crews and 10 snow-thrower units deployed to various subway yards. The subway also relies on a network of remote-controlled third-rail heaters installed in critical locations.
In a system with 665 miles of track, the equipment is especially important along the 222 miles that are exposed to the elements. Those include elevated tracks, lines which operate at street level and in open trenches that span parts of Brooklyn, Queens and The Bronx, where the MTA stages the refurbished cars in anticipation of a projected snowstorm.
The stakes are high as the storm moves closer. During a December 2010 blizzard, close to 500 people were stranded overnight on subway cars that got stuck in the snow, according to a 2011 report from the Office of the MTA Inspector General.
Among them were an N train stalled on the tracks at the elevated New Utrecht Avenue station in Brooklyn and two along the A line in Queens at the Broad Channel and Aqueduct Racetrack stops.
In the years that followed the 2010 blizzard, the MTA operated cautiously in advance of projected major snowstorms. In January 2015, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo suspended subway, commuter rail and bus service at 11 p.m. ahead of a forecasted blizzard that turned out to be a dud.
During a January 2016 snowstorm and again in February 2021, subway service was suspended along the outdoor stretches of the subway system, along with service on the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North.
Lieber said that option is not shaping up as an option just yet, but conceded that the transportation authority will be “calling those audibles as needed.”
“Per the governor’s instruction, the MTA will be running service come hell or high water,” he said. “Whether it’s seven inches or 13 inches or whatever, we’re going to be ready — this is not our first rodeo.”
As he waited for a Manhattan-bound train at the outdoor Ninth Avenue station in Brooklyn, Denny Espinoza, 26, said he’s counting on the subway this weekend to get him to his job as a cook at the Junior’s Restaurant in Times Square.
“I’ll just bundle up, just hopefully not freeze too much and make it to work on time,” Espinoza said. “I’ll definitely need extra time to bundle up and get to work.”
Lieber encouraged those who need mass transit during the looming storm to count on the buses. The MTA chained the tires on those that will be in service, while also planning to not run service on any of its 1,161 accordion-like articulated buses. Those longer, flexible coaches are more likely to encounter problems in the snow.
“The bus system picks up the slack, we know how to prepare for these events — how to get our equipment in place, how to get our people in place,” Lieber said. “God bless the people who are going to work their tails off this weekend to make sure that we are ready.”
Additional reporting by Lilly Sabella.
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