As Yankee fans across the city know all too well, this evening marks the final regular season game at Yankee Stadium. Nothing quite identifies the Yankees as the ride north on the 4 train to the stadium. When the trains come above ground after leaving 149th St./Grand Concourse, Yankee Stadium looms majestically over the tracks, and astute fans know to keep their eyes out for that glimpse inside the stadium from the tracks.

As part of the pre-game ceremony honoring the House that Ruth Built, New York City Transit is planning on running a special nostalgia train along the 4 line from Grand Central up to Yankee Stadium. Via the agency’s press release:

What better way to celebrate the end of an era than hopping aboard a vintage IRT Jerome Ave. express to get to the game.

The four-car “Nostalgia Special” is scheduled to leave Grand Central-42nd Street at approximately 6 p.m., arriving at 161st Street-Yankee Stadium about 30 minutes later. The cars, originally operated by the Interborough Rapid Transit system, began service in 1917 and it is possible that at least one of them carried fans to the game on the first opening day.

The Lo-V subway cars, veterans of more than five decades of service before they were retired in the 1960s, serve as a splendid illustration of just how far subway car technology has advanced over the past 100 years. Customers will be able to sample the modern comforts of NYC Transit’s New Technology Cars on the trip home.

It’s quite the way to honor the closing of the stadium. Fans can pretend it is the early days of Yankee Stadium all over again. The four cars will be from the Lo-V series which operated along the IRT lines from 1917 through 1964. I believe the car numbers, for the rail aficionados, are 5483, 5443, 5292 and 5290.

Personally, I’m heading to this game later this afternoon. While I’d love to take the Nostalgia Train to Yankee Stadium, I’m probably shooting to get the stadium earlier than 6:30. But this is a great way to send off a New York City institution, and the folks who find themselves on this train, intentionally or otherwise, are in for a treat.

Photo via NYC Subway.

For nearly eight decades, the New York City Subway system has sat in stagnant. Since unification in 1940, the City has witnessed the birth of just a handful of new lines with even fewer planned. Yet, subway inertia wasn’t always the norm.

In 1929 and again in 1939, New York City planners dreamed big. Before cars came to dominate our transportation landscape, the city knew that extending the subway would truly complete the system and usher in unprecedented boom times for New York. Thus, along came the IND Second System.

Yesterday’s post on the uncompleted remnants of a Brooklyn subway stop hints at the scope of this ambitious plan. Today, we delve deeper into this vast civic undertaking. The city wanted 100 miles of new tracks connecting every borough to one another. The map at right (click to enlarge) is a work of subway art, and the plan is a beauty.

Read on for an in-depth look at the great Second System plans.

The never-completed and now-abandoned station at South 4th St. in Brooklyn should not be confused with the West 4th St. stop in Manhattan. (Photo via Etsy)

Alternately one of the more endearing or most annoying aspects of the New York City Subway system, post-unification, is the naming scheme for stations. The system has two stops in different boroughs that share the 7th Ave. designation, three stations called 86th St. and a whole bunch of Kings Highway and Ave. U stops. The list is endless, and the only way to tell them apart is by consulting a map or knowing the system’s ins and outs.

There are, of course, a few notable exceptions to the issues of dual names. The various 42nd St. stops all carry with them the designation of the nearby landmarks. We have Times Square-42nd St., 42nd St.-5th Ave./Bryan Park and 42nd St.-Grand Central. And then there is West Fourth Street and the numbered streets labeled East along the IRT White Plains Road line, specifically-named rarities in a system that largely assumes its riders know where they’re going.

This past weekend, that nomenclature was the subject of a question in The New York Times City Section’s FYI column. Asked a curious reader: “Most subway stops’ names use only the street number (42nd Street, for example). How come West Fourth Street and a few stops in the Bronx (like East 180th Street and East 149th Street) are given an east/west distinction?”

The answer:

Mainly to avoid confusion.

Herb Schonhaut, manager in New York City Transit’s Office of Station Signage, said the Fourth Street station uses the word “West” to distinguish it from the planned but unbuilt “South” Fourth Street Station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Mr. Schonhaut added that East 180th Street (on the No. 2 and 5 lines) and East 149th Street (No. 6 line) use “East” to contrast with similar stations to the west: 180th Street/Bronx Park (which closed in 1952) and 149th Street/Grand Concourse. East 143rd Street was distinguished from 143rd Street on the Third Avenue el, which shut down in 1955.

Now, the second part of this answer, I knew. When the subways were first built, the IRT, BMT and IND lines were competing systems, and it was not until 1940 that all three systems were placed under the control of the city. The three companies followed their own naming conventions, and we are still today stuck with this relic of the past.

The first part of the answer — about South Fourth St. — was news to me, and the Waterfront Preservation Alliance of Greenpoint and Williamsburg did the heavy lifting on this intriguing station. The now-abandoned semi-station at South Fourth Street in Brooklyn was to be a part of the IND Second System, a great idea lost to the Great Depression. WGPA has more:

The proposed service to Williamsburg included two new lines: one connecting to the Sixth Avenue line and running beneath the East River from Houston Street; the second connecting to the Eighth Avenue line and running under the River from Grand Street in Manhattan (with the last stop at Columbia Street).

In Williamsburg, the north line was to run beneath Grand Street as far as Driggs, and then turn south to meet up with the second line, which was to run under Broadway and South Fourth Street (more detail here). All of this was to meet up with the Crosstown Line (aka the G train) at Broadway and South 4th. That was the South 4th Street station referred to in the Times article…From South Fourth Street, the lines continued east. In Bed Stuy, they were to branch off. The Utica Avenue would run to the south, eventually winding up in Sheepshead Bay. The Rockaway line would continue northeast along Myrtle and Central Avenues, and then turn south and run all the way to the Rockaways.

So the two Fourth Streets would have been a mere four stations apart, and the coverage of the subways between Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan would have been vastly improved. But, alas, the Second System was not to be. While some of the plans — a subway to the Rockaways, for instance — saw the light of the day, the ambitious expansion drive faltered before long, and the West Fourth St. name is a testament to an era in which the city dreamed big and came up small.