Red Lights IN Times Sq Station

[joshg1]

Without a lot of preamble, in 1959 two Yalies recorded a comedy album, Bert & I, and one of the stories is about a man who travels from eastern Maine to Oyster Bay by train. His instructions include taking the shuttle from Grand Central and, when it stops, follow the red lights and hop on the train to Penn Station. When he gets to "the end", ie Times Square, he finds two sets of red lights. I can't find any reference to lights online. Were there a line or line of lights, red or otherwise, used for directing transfers at Times Square? Are there still?

This is one of those annoying thoughts that pop into my head with increasing frequency.

[R36 Combine Coach]

I believe it refers to a IRT tradition of route signals. Stations on the Broadway/West Side Line (1/2/3) were indentified by red color signals, the Lexington/East Side lines (4/5/6) were green. This tradition continues under NYCT and MTA today as the 1/2/3 are the "red" lines and 4/5/6 "green" lines.

So the story meant, after exiting the shuttle at Times Square, follow the red lights to the IRT Broadway line to connect to Penn Station.

[ExCon90]

The lights were mounted in the ceiling, and you walked along under them. I remember them from the 1940's, when I was a kid, and had no idea that that was the basis for the choice of colors for the East Side and West Side IRT when the present ID colors on the map were adopted.

[joshg1]

Thanks to both of you. In the story Harry gets out at Times Sq and finds one set of lights running east and one set running west, so he asks a stranger for help. The stranger, a local, does, so you know it's fiction;-)