Remembering the 01400s

Unless you had train engineer earplugs!

But otherwise the 01400s were good and 01479 I see was one of the last to survive with 01480, 81, 83, 78, 77, 69, 70, 01460, 01463 and a few others that ran in 1994 at the very end

sow what are the 01400s? were they the T's FP10s, or the E 8s and 9s?

1963 model cars on the Red Line, replaced in 1993-94 by 01800s.

There are some pictures of the surviving two pairs that are used on the work train on my site. http://sery2831.smugmug.com

I thought that that "Silver Line Opening" shot was a bald man's convention ! (Not that I should talk.)

typesix wrote:Yea, you can lose your hearing riding if you had to ride in an 01400 in the subway all day.

I remember riding the older brown Red Line trains (forget their numbers) including the Braintree specials with soft seats and fluorescent lights. Man, were they noisy when hurtling through the tunnels.

Weren't the 1400's the last series of cars with incandescent bulls eye lights running on the Red Line?

I rode the 01400's for years - they were loud but not that loud. If anything, I found it easier to read the paper and not get distracted by people around me.

When you were stuck on a crowded platform and needed to get going in a hurry, a train of those crowd-gobbling 01400's was a welcome sight.

Disney Guy wrote: I remember riding the older brown Red Line trains (forget their numbers) including the Braintree specials with soft seats and fluorescent lights. Man, were they noisy when hurtling through the tunnels.

The real colors were pullman green, with the exception of the Braintrees (Traction Orange) and a handful of repainted cars from the 1950s (gray with medium orange). The brown was a mixture of rust and tunnel grime, as the cars weren't kept washed. Cars were numbered from 0600 to 0754 in four lots. See my previous post on the subject for more info.

Weren't the 1400's the last series of cars with incandescent bulls eye lights running on the Red Line?

They were - built in 1963 after NYC had used discharge (DC) fluorescents like the Braintrees since the 1940s. The 01400s were twice as bright as their predecessors - twice as many of the same light bulbs!

Disney Guy wrote:

typesix wrote:Yea, you can lose your hearing riding if you had to ride in an 01400 in the subway all day.

I remember riding the older brown Red Line trains (forget their numbers) including the Braintree specials with soft seats and fluorescent lights. Man, were they noisy when hurtling through the tunnels.

Weren't the 1400's the last series of cars with incandescent bulls eye lights running on the Red Line?

Here's a repeat of a post of Gerry's #4 car numbers and my recollections regarding these cars:


The following No. 4 cars survived after 1963:

0706 (Braintree)
0707
0708
0709 (Work Car until 1988 - At Seashore - Used for storage)
0717
0719 (Braintree - Preserved at Seashore in 1970)
0720 (Braintree)
0723
0724 (Braintree)
0727
0732
0734
0738
0740
0742
0743
0747 (Not removed in 1970, Scrapped 1977)
0748
0749 (Work Car until 1988 - At Seashore - Used for storage)
0753 (Orange & Gray - Work Car before 1969 until 1988 - Preserved at Seashore)
0754 (Work Car before 1969 until 1988 - At Seashore - Used for storage)

Besides 0753 and 0754 others may have been in work service before 1969

Total of 21 cars. Fifteen were scrapped at the site of Cabot Yard in early 1970.

All other No. 4 cars were scrapped in 1962-1963

All No. 2 and No. 3 cars were scrapped in 1962-1963.

20 No. 1 cars were scrapped ca. 1955. Does anybody know which cars these were?

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Very interesting list, Gerry. Thanks for listing it.

I'm sure that most of the Type 1's were the first to go as they were the oldest, but I do know for a fact that one of them most likely made it to sometime between 1959 and 1961. Reason being is that as I have mentioned before, as a small kid, I had the fortune to catch one of the cars partitioned with a smoking parlor and signed as such. I'm sure of the time span as it was during a three year residence in the Columbia Point Housing Project. I believe that the 1's were the only group that had smoking cars. Unfortunately, as an eight year old, I was too young (?) to light up an Avo, but it remains as one of my imagined fantasies to this day.

I liked the #1-#4 Cambridge Tunnel Cars a lot. I thought that they had a lot of personality, and as johnhrr stated, the 1's were quite revolutionary and trend setting in their day in design and power. They were not subtle cars - they were big and loud. I remember enjoying the shift in sound either entering or exiting the subway, when the loud Westinghouse motors would growl menacingly inside the confines of the subway walls, and then seemingly quiet to a bubbling sing-song cadence outside. In snow, you could hardly hear the motors. Their large Master Car Builder trucks were large Interurban trucks, and more than adequate to pull their load. I always thought that the Governor Bradfords made the cars look Mickey Moused and not in keeping with their handsome look. I loved the splashy Victorian loud-loud salmon walls with aqua wooden slatted seats extreme gloss inside with the orange and grey outside. Watching the guards relaxing outside them on a hot summer day was to see a lost art form. The cars would be wriggling like a worm on a fishing pole and these guys would be leaning with one shoulder against the cab and one foot on a smoothly worn concrete platform without a care in the world. Beneath them would be a three or four foot gap into oblivion.Paul Allen Joyce
3rdrail

While the 01400s were great cars for the railroad enthusiasths like me. The Railfan window was open (if you stood 5' 7" or higher to circumvent the ATO Box in order to see out fromt, plus you got to hang on to the metal strapbar and enjoy the feel and experienced, I certainly enjoyed myself in and around those cars, they were and are my favorites (we still have the work motors/school train at Cabot, hopefully it'll be preserved) although now they have the flourescent light bars since I don't think the incandescent light bulbs work anymore. Plus the heat strips are good to to stay warm during chilly temps.

There were a few years before the ATO Box era when the left side was completely open. Before that the curtain was religiously closed.

The 01400s had an interesting hum from the door engines when they were new. This was soon superseded by the familiar scraping sound, which no amount of repair or rebuilding could cure.

They had great heat, especially when it was 90° out. Fans served only to move the heated air around. The 80 incandescent lamps contributed their share of heat, and that's not counting a couple of dozen 56 watters.

Markers were supposed to be fixed at red but they often displayed green or amber during the holidays.

Unlike many in this group, I considered these to be the absolute nadir of Red Line car design where they kept the worst features of the old cars, and were far superseded when the fifteens and sixteens arrived. Sadly, the one bright spot, the interior design, was lost in the later cars.

Gerry, apparently at one time the MBTA agreed with you regarding the car's nadiresqueness, as they didn't cross the Andrew/Columbia-Quincy path off the turnout. If you were in the subway and saw that it was a "Silverbird", you knew that it was going to Quincy. You didn't need to check the rollsign. An 01400 was headed to the Chester.

Gerry and Paul I read somewhere I believe the Red Line Book (Cambridge Dorchester By F.Chene) That the Bluebirds were a victim of serious cost cut backs during their production. Is this true??

AllMcLernon era cars and buses were poor in relation to what came before and after. There was no effort made to attract customers in that era.

Gerry6309 wrote: Markers were supposed to be fixed at red but they often displayed green or amber during the holidays.

Do you remember when they used to set the markers to all green on St. Patrick's day?

Always an interesting day to ride the subway, especially if you got on late in the evening when the bars where emptying out

Jon