In service 1931-1977 Constructed 1930–1931 Number built 300 | Built at Berwick, Pennsylvania Scrapped 1969-1977 | |
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Manufacturer American Car and Foundry Company | ||
The R1 was the first New York City Subway car type built for the IND. 300 cars were manufactured between 1930 and 1931 by the American Car and Foundry Company, numbered 100 through 399. Future passenger stock orders – including contracts R4, R6, R7, R7A, and R9 – were virtually identical, with minor mechanical and cosmetic variations. Therefore, these car classes are frequently referred to collectively as Arnines, or R1-9s.
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The R1s were also specifically sometimes referred to as City Cars.
They introduced several improvements to subway car design that greatly sped up the flow of passengers in and out of trains.
History
The first R1 cars to see passenger service were twenty individual cars to serve for two 8 car trains plus spares that were placed in revenue service on the BMT Sea Beach Line from July 8 to November, 1931 for testing and then returned to the IND the same year. The BMT was to have been paid by the City of New York for the testing but since they were fairly extensively used in service (made up as two 8-car trains), the BMT and City called it even.
The cars were ordered so that the new Eighth Avenue Line subway could be operated.
In 1949 when all of the R10 cars were delivered and placed in service on the A line, approximately 224 of these R1 cars were transferred to the 36th Street Yard of the BMT Southern Division to relieve a car shortage on the BMT Lines, and used for service on the BMT 2 (now R) Broadway 4th Avenue Local service, which was extended from Queensboro Plaza to the Astoria-Ditmars Blvd. Station of this former IRT line, which also happened in 1949 which required more cars for operating this new extended BMT service until 1961 when new R27/30's cars were delivered to the New York City Transit System's BMT Lines, which in turn replaced and released these loaned R1 cars to be sent back to the IND Division.
Most R1s were retired between 1969 and 1970 as age decayed the cars' internal components, causing the cars to perform worse than their newer contemporaries. Many were replaced by the R42s, but some remained past 1970 until those cars were retired and replaced by the R44s, though one car, originally numbered 369, remained in service as 576 from 1969 (and then as 1768 from 1972) and was transferred to the East New York Yard of the Eastern Division until February 1977 when it was finally replaced by the R46s.
Following their removal from service, the majority of the fleet was scrapped. Few cars remained as work cars and were used until the 1980s. Several other cars have been preserved and remain today, including:
Car 175 is at the Seashore Trolley Museum, but is used only for storage. It does not have trucks, and two of its side doors were donated to R4 401 which has been preserved by Railway Preservation Corp. and restored.
Description
The R1s were the first "R" type contract order (referring to the practice of naming a car class by the letter "R" – which stands for rapid transit – followed by a number derived from the actual contract number). Note: The R2 contract order was for trucks and motors for the R1 fleet. In 1930, each new car cost $39,201: $30,483 for the carbody under contract R1, and $8,718 for trucks and motors under contract R2.