Manufacturer St. Louis Car Company Entered service 1960–1961 Scrapped 1989-1990, 2013 | Constructed 1960-1961 Refurbishment early 1989 (27 cars) | |
Replaced BMT Standard, BMT ex-Staten Island ME-1 units, BMT Bluebirds, BMT Multi's, and many older BMT elevated equipment | ||
The R27 was a New York City Subway car built by the St. Louis Car Company for the New York City Transit Authority in 1960 and 1961.
Contents
About
The R27s were numbered 8020-8249.
The R27s were a continuation of the R16 style, except that the cars used the IRT R26-style pink hard fiberglass all-longitudinal seating instead of the mixed combination seating found on the older R16s.
The R27s were coupled together as pairs. These cars, along with their identical R30 and R30A sister cars, replaced the oldest BMT Standards (including all 50 of the trailer cars), the ME-1s transferred from the SIRT, the MS Multi-section cars, and the IRT Lo-Vs that were modified to be used on B-division shuttles.
The R27s were the first cars to not use the numerical route designations used on former BMT lines; the cars ushered in letter designations for such routes (continuing where the IND designations ended). The IND routes either then or previously in use ran from A to HH; the BMT designations now ran from J to TT. After the merger in late 1967, many IND and BMT routes were joined together by some lines.
There were two versions of the R27: Westinghouse-powered equipped cars (8020-8135) and General Electric-powered cars (8136-8249).
History
The first train of R27s entered service on the QT line on November 15, 1960. The initial consist was #8027–8024, #8021–8020 and #8028–8029. The R27 were initially assigned to the QT and QB lines. Once the R27s had arrived in sufficient numbers, they provided all weekend service on the BMT Southern Division.
Most R27s were transferred to the BMT Eastern Division after November 1967, although they would appear in the northern and southern divisions as well as on IND routes.
Overhaul
In early 1989, 24 selected GE-powered R27s and 3 Westinghouse-powered R27s were rebuilt and painted in the fox red paint scheme, similar to the 162 GE-powered R30s and other Redbird trains in the subway system, as part of the Clean Car Program. The overhaul of the 27 cars costed $100,000 per car.
The cars that were rebuilt were 8042, 8091, 8126, 8145, 8158-8159, 8172-8173, 8177, 8186, 8224-8225, 8236, and 8241 (not completed). They ran on the C until being retired.
Retirement
The R27s were replaced by the R68As in 1989, and indirectly replaced by rebuilt R38s and unrebuilt R30s, which started appearing on the C in late 1988. Car 8249 was the first R27 car to be retired, and the last un-rebuilt train ran on May 10, 1989, which marked an end to graffiti on subway cars.
The overhauled R27s were planned to run for many years to come, but all cars except 8042 were instead retired by the summer of 1989 due to reliability problems. 8042 was the last R27 to operate; it was mated to R30 car 8513 and ran on the C until the early 1990s.
None of the R27s were preserved. After retirement, the R27s were scrapped between 1989-1990. However, car 8145 was retained as a school car until 2011, when it was stored at Pitkin Yard. The car was finally stripped at the 207th Street Yard and then sent to Sims Metal Management in Newark, New Jersey to be scrapped on October 22, 2013.