Dan's Papers - June 27, 2008 - The Hampton Subway Newsletter

50 Cent was seen on the Quogue Station platform arguing with the woman in the token booth about the fact that the cost should not be a dollar for him, but some other amount. Our spy says he was not sure what that amount was. Donald Trump, Britney Spears and Vice President Dick Cheney were chatting together on the Westhampton Beach platform on Friday about something. Kim Cattrall was seen looking at her watch at the Northwest station.

DELAYS: There are going to be huge delays for the next two weeks. In fact, the entire western half of the subway system will be completely shut down for at least the first six days, as explained below

The first 10 of what was expected to be 22 new double-decker subway cars went into service last Sunday afternoon to begin service in time for the Fourth of July rush. They had been fully tested in Sweden, and their heights carefully measured by Biff Aspinall, the beloved brother of Commissioner Bill Aspinall, to make sure they would fit through our tunnel system. They didn't.

The problem became immediately apparent after the train of these 10 new cars left Southampton Station with a wide variety of dignitaries on board to take a premiere non-stop (because of the dignitaries' busy schedules), full loop of the system, so they could be shown how it was done. On leaving the station, the high roof of the cars began to make terrible noises, which later turned out to be because they began to rapidly tear down all the lighting in the tunnel. This lighting is not recessed.

Although the dignitaries, fleeing from the upper deck to the lower deck, tried to alert the motorman to stop the train, he continued along, past Shinnecock, Hampton Bays, East Quogue, Quogue, Westhampton Beach, Eastport and Speonk, tearing down all the light fixtures as he went. He then turned north, went up to the new Hampton Bays North/Indian Casino stop, to the County Road 39 stop, continuing to tear down lighting fixtures, and then continued on through to North Sea and finally Noyac, where, with a grinding sound, the train got completely wedged where it makes a sharp turn going under and around Trout Pond. Apparently, for some reason, the height of that tunnel, which was built in 1933, was slightly lower there. Finally, when the train simply came to a stop wedged in there, the motorman turned off the engine and went out onto the tracks to see what the trouble was. There he heard the shouts of the passengers and went up to talk to them.

It's a huge mess. All the lights are out from Southampton, Noyac and North Sea and all the way to Eastport, with the fixtures either wedged into the tops of the new passenger cars or littered along the tracks.

The motorman said he heard all the banging on his locked door, thought it was to congratulate him on the job he was doing and felt it was best to leave that alone until the job was finished going the whole way around. He said he regretted he was unable to do that as ordered.

Firemen from 17 fire departments rescued all the dignitaries and put out the few electrical fires that had begun behind the train. Later in the day, the Commissioner held a press conference. Here are excerpts of what he had to say.

I regret to announce that the new Swedish-made double-decker passenger cars have not worked out. We are holding Sweden fully responsible for this debacle, and as I speak lawyers are preparing the proper papers we intend to serve, uh, in Swedish. We are canceling the order for the remaining 12 cars and are impounding the 10 that were so severely damaged in our car impound area.

I am pleased to announce that all 123 dignitaries on the train are well and accounted for, though a few of them lost their hats and most lost those clear acrylic statuettes we gave them to commemorate them being the "first riders."

My greatest sorrow about this, of course, is to think of our riders. We were headed for another record week of customers until this happened.

The three cars wedged underground at the turn in Noyac should be extricated before next Thursday, I am told. And with our employees working diligently to clean up the mess in the tunnels, we expect to be out of service for six days, but on the seventh day we will be open, using lanterns to light the tunnels.

Although our underground service will remain open from Water Mill to Montauk, riders are urged to use the busses and trains that will be put into service on an emergency basis until we can reopen the western half of our subway route, which our public relations director Hal Barnes has asked me to call our new "romantic route."