Obviously this photo sucks, but it is merely a stand-in. These are sad days for subway fans as the last of the "redbird" subway cars are in their last days. In fact they are down to less than 2 dozen trains of these cars, all of which are running on the 7 line and are going to be scrapped/reefed soon. I am going to be out and about this weekend trying to photograph them (one of the trainsets still running has the 'subway series' paint job...I saw it this afternoon.) I am not being un-justifiably nostalgic over bullshit methinks...at least not in this case.

The redbirds were, in their own way, a remarkable piece of engineering and worksmanship. Some of the remaining sets were originally brought into service for the NY World's Fair! Almost all of these cars have been in stop/start service for 40 years, for what must be millions of miles.

Each one taken out of service also removes a "railfan window", which is simply a place to stand at the front of the front car and look out down the tracks ahead of the train...something that seems to me to be all but a birthright for little boys and dads to do together on the train. Most newer train cars don't have open windows in the front for passengers.

These are also the last trains with the old "straphanger" configurations for standing passengers. Yes, this is a small point, but for me on my first visit to NY, to be standing there hanging onto one of the metal loops was like living in a movie or something. No less important than having a dirty-water hot dog or asking how to get to Carnegie Hall, at least not for a nerd like me.

These subway cars were the only ones to run outdoors on elevated tracks through the Bronx during the classic graffiti era...you couldn't represent early NY hip-hop on video without showing these trains. I don't know if I would go so far as to say that keeping the cars free of paint was an art crime, but I think one trainset should be saved and given a classic whole-train graffiti-job on each side, and displayed.

One redeeming element to the redbird extirpation is that many of them are being cleaned up and dropped into the ocean as artificial reefs. Now dey sleepz wit' da fishes...