Old Hamptons Subway Trains Found in Tunnel

SCENE ON THE SUBWAY

Boarding the westbound subway at the Georgica station on Sunday Aug. 31 were Steven Spielberg, Blythe Danner, Christie Brinkley and her daughters Alexa Ray and Sailor all dressed up and bound for the horse show in Bridgehampton.

OLD SUBWAY TRAINS FOUND

Maintenance workers cleaning a tunnel between Amagansett and Napeague on Monday have found an entire warehouse filled with old subway trains from the time when Ivan Kratz built the system in 1932. How anybody could have missed seeing them up until this point is not comprehensible. A single railroad spur leaves the main line and goes along the floor under a giant garage door which though not locked, had been closed. Kratz, the larger-than-life builder of the Hampton Subway system, created Hamptons Subway in 1932 in order to hide building material he had left over after building the Lexington Line in Manhattan that year. He had double-ordered everything. He was trying not to get caught. The subway system, never opened by Kratz, remained unknown underground until 2007 when workmen in Sag Harbor excavating a Superfund site near the post office there dug down and discovered the roof of the Sag Harbor platform.

The system was opened the following year. The subway cars found, 17 in all, were all old and worn in 1932. Kratz must have bought them used. Iron plaques on them say they were built in 1917 by the Dayton, Cleveland and Foundry Manufacturing Company in Cincinnati, Ohio. All work with iron cranks that have to be stuck in the front grille and hand turned by the motorman to get the engines to start. Here, today, 16 of the cars would not start when we tried, but the last turned right over with a great throaty roar when cranked. We have now put that car into our regular system for our straphangers to enjoy for the next month, not only for its joyful accouterments – gas lamps, horsehair stuffed seats, and copper hang-on poles – but also to give this brave car a workout.

As all antique car owners know, antique cars want to be driven. It keeps them healthy. Straphangers will not know which train is being pulled by the ancient car until they see it. There are six trains on the circuit at any one time so five will be the regular trains. One thing straphangers will experience is a small inconvenience. The trains in service only go as fast as the slowest train. Our usual top speed between stations is 32 miles an hour. The Dayton, Cleveland and Foundry car tops out only at 11 miles an hour. Just bear with it for this month. It will take longer for you to get where you are going.

REVERSE CLIP-CLOP

For the next few days, expect a lingering smell of horse manure on the system. Last Wednesday night, all the horses from the Hampton Classic Horse Show took the slow trot through our tunnels to get to their trailers at the Westhampton station and their ride back to wherever they came from. Our maintenance crew works double shifts to clean up after them, but they can’t get every little thing right away.

BIRTHDAY

Ivan Kratz would have been 125 years old if he were alive today. He was born on Sept. 7, 1900, and he was a young building contractor when he embarked on the courageous and imaginative plan to hide the extra building materials he stole by burying them underground in the Hamptons. We celebrate his birthday this week with a big party in our company cafeteria that will feature a chocolate cake – his favorite – with 125 candles on it, which our Commissioner Bill Aspinall will attempt to blow out in one breath. Now won’t that be something! We also celebrate the opening of the subway system after its underground existence was discovered in 2007 on May 10 every year, and the anniversary of Kratz’s incarceration for his crimes every March 17.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GLEN WILLIAMSON

Glen Williamson, who is a mid-level screen viewer in the subway security surveillance system monitoring program in our Hampton Bays office, turns 29 on Friday. A party will be given for him at 4 p.m. in the company cafeteria. As has been done in the past, all monitor screens in the building will show Mr. Williamson during the 10 seconds it takes to blow out the candles. There should be no harm done. This brief break from surveillance has not missed anything in the past.

BRAZILIAN ANCESTRY

In President Trump’s continuing attempt to force Hamptons Subway to be sold to him for $1 because of what he says is its continuing stubbornness of not being sold to him. He has now ordered that any persons of Brazilian extraction using the subway be arrested and deported because of something the Brazilians have done that is not to his liking. Commissioner Bill Aspinall says he will obey this order, but does not know of anyone of Brazilian extraction who uses our system.

COMMISSIONER BILL ASPINALL’S REPORT

I have been meeting with the curator of the new New York City Subway Track Junk Museum and we have reached an agreement to allow anything of interest that is not valuable to us amidst the trash we find on the tracks that is picked up every night by our subway maintenance division to be donated to this museum, scheduled to be opened next month on the city’s Museum Row on Fifth Avenue, directly next door to the Guggenheim Museum. Hamptons Subway will have a special section in the museum behind a velvet rope, so our junk is not mixed up with the city subway junk.