Hamptons Subway Newsletter: Week of April 20-26, 2012
Riders this week: 13,162
Rider miles this week: 131,815
TOURING THE SUBWAY
Our new marketing director, Carl Besmith, has kicked off his tenure with the company with a bang. He has designed and written a brochure about the subway, the sights you could see while on it and about its history. The brochure, which he has now had printed up in full color is available at newsstands and at token booths on the subway platforms to be given out free of charge.
Besmith assumes that tourists especially would like this brochure as a guide while visiting here. So if that is you, bring your backpack and camera and come along. (Backpack subject to search of course.)
The tour begins in Westhampton. You will see the statue down on the platform there of President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia holding hands, a memorial to the two of them when they visited here together in 2006.
You can come up the new escalators and take a tour in Hampton Bays of the Hampton Subway offices in the Hampton Subway building, designed in 1936 by German architect Albrecht Speer as one of his masterpieces.
You can have the train stop just below the overhead grating and catch basin where, in 2007, a 206-pound raccoon got caught and resisted removal for days by biting and hissing. This is in Shinnecock.
You can take the sharp curve on the Noyac Line where the subway motorman shouts over the loudspeaker “hold on tight” as you make the sharp turn underneath Trout Pond.
And you can visit Montauk where all of the 36 subway cars go for maintenance and cleaning every night. Just stay outside the barbed wire. Those German Shepherds bite!!
You can also see our newest stop, the beautifully decorated by a famous New York interior decorator Georgica Station, at which the train only stops by advance reservation. This keeps the great unwashed from getting off there. Of course you will have had advance permission to get off there, if you plan ahead. You fill out the form. I’m sure its okay.
Last week, in honor of the publication of this brochure, Commissioner Aspinall announced that he will have the maintenance team build a 10-foot square glass skylight in the ceiling of the tunnel beneath the Shinnecock Canal so tourists can see the fish as they pass by below.
DELAY CAUSED BY PIPING PLOVER
The subway system came to a halt for two hours last Wednesday when an ornithologist on board reported seeing a single piping plover nesting in a niche of a subway wall between Southampton and Water Mill. The plovers, an endangered species of little birds, are now arriving from their sojourn up from the south. They are, of course, completely protected and have priority to nest wherever they want without being disturbed—which means nobody is allowed to come within 20 feet of them and they put up fencing for that.
Most plovers come in pairs and nest at the beach, so it was decided after consultations with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Nature Conservancy and the National Transportation Board that because the subway must go on for economic reasons— not having it could trigger a recession, the single plover must have lost her way and nested here inappropriately. She was netted and brought down to the beach and, to locate her mate, which only she could do, released into the wild there. With a sigh of relief, the trains were on the move again.
COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE
I am very proud of our new public relations director, coming up with the idea for a tourist pamphlet right off the mark. He also, without permission but I guess just from enthusiasm, put up a movie screen on the Southampton platform so that the straphangers would have something to watch while waiting for the train. The film, on an infinite loop, is a tour of the train system as explained in the new brochure, and it also includes important historical footage, such as President Bush II and Premier Vladimir Putin I walking hand in hand down the escalator in Westhampton. But I had to put a stop to it because the crowds were blocking the access to the trains. I commend him for his effort though.