For anyone who wants to know what it was like to ride the NYC subways in the 1930s and ‘40s, Vanishing New York has you covered:
The Nostalgia Train doesn’t sound or feel or smell like today’s bright
and whispery subway cars. Heavy in its bones, it broadcasts a loud
symphony of sound, rattling and wheezing through the underworld. Inside,
ceiling fans whiz overhead. The air is olive drab or else some shade of
sea foam.
Open windows let in the smells of the tunnel, which shift from swampy
organics to a fragrance you’d swear was burnt buttered toast.
Soot flies in and lands in your eye. In these old cars, you are not sheltered from the city. You are joined to it.
There is no stillness here. The rattan benches bounce your spine up and down as the jolting car keeps all bodies in motion.
But the best part comes when the train dives beneath the East River and
launches forth to Queens. The driver lets out the throttle, like letting
loose the reins of a horse, and the whole thing torpedoes ahead. It
dives deeper, faster, jerking from side to side, shuddering in its
bolts. A gritty wind blasts through the openings, strong enough to knock
off a hat, if it tried.
In this unbridled speed, the riders are giddy. It is a relief to feel
the city thrumming in your gut, to not be insulated from it, to not be
held in some sterile, hospital-lit tube.
This feels real. This knocking around. This sucking down the filthy wind. This robust mechanical jolt.
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