Hamptons Subway Sets New Record with Daily Delays

SCENE ON THE SUBWAY

Singer Suzanne Vega was seen strumming her guitar while riding between Southampton and Shinnecock.

NEW RECORD

Hamptons Subway experienced a record number of delays this past week; in fact, the number was exactly one every day. We’ve never had systemwide delays every single day of a week before. This is a new record.

On Monday, at 10:32 a.m., a small child dropped a teddy bear down onto the tracks on the Water Mill platform and began carrying on to such a degree that the trains had to be halted. The delay was for 10 minutes.

On Tuesday at 5 a.m., the subway system failed to start when activated by the pulling of the switch from our Hampton Bays office. There was an electrical outage somewhere, and the workmen had to track it down. It turned out to be between Sag Harbor and East Hampton, where a plug had slipped out of a socket.  The delay was an hour and 10 minutes and the system reopened at 6:10 a.m.

On Wednesday, the system automatically came to a halt when a metal plate attached to the bottom of one of the cars alongside the brake lining came loose and began touching the third rail at 2:45 p.m. in the Westhampton Beach station. Smoke was seen outside the car where burning was taking place and the train was promptly evacuated. The security people boarded the train with fire extinguishers to put out the blaze, which by spraying with the stuff and separating the plate from the third rail with tongs, they successfully did.  The delay was 50 minutes.

On Thursday at 9:14 a.m., right in the middle of rush hour, all the trains came to a halt for 45 minutes when a hysterical woman said on a train parked in the Quogue station that her wedding ring had slipped off her finger and had fallen down into the crack.   Security people retrieved it for her, and she paid them a small reward from her purse.  She was advised to keep the ring in her purse for the rest of the trip and she did.

The Friday delay came between 2:00 and 3:30 in the afternoon when a family of endangered piping plovers flew down the stairs, across the turnstiles and into the tunnel between Bridgehampton and Water Mill. Our environmental unit was called and used a handcar on the tracks to determine that the birds had not nested on the tracks there. In fact, the birds were nowhere to be seen. Apparently they flew off or something.

On Saturday, the air conditioning system on the East Hampton platform started making a terrible noise and repairmen came and turned it off to make a repair.  The token clerk in charge there, with the heat of the day rising, ordered the platform evacuated and the stop closed. This triggered a closing of the whole system, but then the central office in Hampton Bays overruled her when they heard about it and ordered the system reopened but with signs put up warning people in delicate health not to walk faster than necessary to board the trains. The temperature did reach over 90 degrees though. And the repairs were completed later in the day.

And at 5 a.m. on Sunday morning, the system opened to discover that the Amagansett platform was now entirely populated with about 200 members of a religious sect holding morning services, sitting on the floor holding hands in anticipation of some peculiar cosmic event expected later in the day. It took subway security 40 minutes to shoo them away and during that time the subway system was not running and we apologize for this delay.

FLAGMAN DELAY

Finally, on Sunday there was a further delay between 3:00 and 3:30 p.m. As many of you know, the Hampton Subway was originally built in 1932 by Ivan Kratz, and as an antique is listed on the New York Register of Historic Places. Things cannot be changed.

The Hampton Subway flagmen who work in the tunnels are also listed. Although other subway systems have long since installed red or green lights in the tunnels to tell the motormen to proceed or wait, Hamptons Subway still uses the flagmen that were hired for this service in 1932. Not the same flagmen, of course, but the children and grandchildren of these flagmen. Now unionized, they get mighty good pay for what they do, which is wave either red or orange or green flags at the oncoming trains as the case may be.  (These flags are hand sewn in a sweatshop in the Flatiron Building by immigrants, just as they were in 1932.)

Anyway, on Sunday at 3 p.m., a flagman between Southampton and Water Mill dropped his flag onto the tracks and then refused to go down to retrieve it, reporting that it had landed on the third rail. After being told that if that were the case it would have already burst into flames, he still declined to retrieve it.  All service therefore came to a halt and for 25 minutes did not move, until the flagmen foreman for the eastern service arrived and retrieved it with his pincers on a stick he uses for such purposes. The man, Harry McFarland, although he had 22 years with the service, was promptly fired, as well as he should have been.

COMMISSIONER BILL ASPINALL’S MESSAGE

I am in Paris discussing developments here with the Paris Subway System authorities. I’m working without a translator and this does make it difficult. Will be home on Wednesday.