Hamptons Subway Newsletter: Week of March 1–6, 2018

By Dan Rattiner

4 minute 03/05/2018

Hamptons Subway car with solar panels seen in Bridgehampton rail yard, Photo: Yurii Hnidets/123RF

Week of March 1–6, 2018
Riders this past week: 26,814
Rider miles this past week: 89,813

DOWN IN THE TUBE
Author Roger Rosenblatt was seen in animated conversation with Renaissance man Alan Alda on a morning subway headed toward Montauk from Amagansett on Thursday. Jerry Seinfeld was spotted carrying three mitts, a baseball bat and ball between Bridgehampton and East Hampton last Wednesday afternoon. Jimmy Buffett of North Haven was seen on his way to the Georgica Station, the summer-only stop, to see how things were coming along with his plan to have it decorated in a Margaritaville décor in time for the opening of his Broadway show Escape to Margaritaville, apparently unaware that his plan to have it done was rejected.

SOLAR PANELS ON SUBWAYS?
A plan to put an array of solar panels on the roofs of all the subway cars has been approved by the Hamptons Subway committee and will be in place by June 15. The project will cost $650,000. That the train is entirely underground could be a problem, but who knows. Hamptons Subway has always been at the forefront of new technology.

MAJOR GENERAL FIRED
Unbeknownst to Commissioner Aspinall, Lawrence Barry, the new chief of the Hamptons Subway maintenance crew, which cleans and repairs the trains every night between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. in the Montauk Yards had, upon arrival here one month ago, given military titles to all the workers. He declared himself general, his foremen became lieutenants, the worker chiefs became sergeants and the staff members became privates. The Commissioner found out about this when he went out to the Yards last Thursday evening to do his annual review and found all the men lined up and at attention for inspection wearing yellow berets and holstered pistols. Barry told him he had given these titles in the hopes his platoon would work faster. The Commissioner quickly left and the next morning, in his Hampton Bays office, fired Barry via e-mail, signing himself as Commander-in-Chief.

BELOVED SERVICE DOG DIES
Pets are not permitted on the subway system, but service animals are allowed to help a straphanger with special needs. Last Thursday, on a crowded train heading from Southampton to Shinnecock, Annie Collins, who has a nervous problem soothed by her toy poodle, Andy, suffered a terrible blow when a poisonous service snake named Biff, owned by Charlie Watson of Hampton Bays (who has anger problems), bit Andy through the bars of its snake carrier cage. Tomorrow, Friday, is a day of mourning on the subway and framed pictures of Andy will be at all the token booths. Donations are welcome.

TUNNEL MACHINE CHAINED
Straphangers will surely notice the big re-enforced concrete patch on the tunnel wall between Water Mill and Bridgehampton halfway along. The patch has become necessary to keep the Hamptons Subway tunnel-boring machine from doing further damage. This machine, the size of a truck, started itself up last Wednesday at 3 a.m. and lurched forward in its storage room to carve a huge hole in the wall trying to get out. Maintenance workers fought with it as it sat crossways on the tracks—turning it off did no good—and finally wrestled it back into the storage room to chain it to the wall. Straphangers will also be able to hear it from their subway cars as they go by, roaring away.

COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE
Straphangers have nothing to fear from the tunnel-boring machine. The chains that tie him to the wall in the storage room are made of titanium and cannot be broken.