The New York City Subway Lines Project:
The Lines That Used To Be


WHAT IS IT?
The New York City Subway didn't always look like it does today. From its inception in 1904, it went through several changes: new tracks, abandoned stations, new lines, new companies, and the Great Renaming. This is an attempt to track these changes.

WHAT'S THE GREAT RENAMING?
The original MTA plans had several trains running under the same letter, differentiated by the frequency; that is, single letters (E, A) signified express trains, while doubled (RR, QB) meant local. There were a few exceptions (such as the NX), but those will be covered in the individual writeups. In the mid 1980s, as part of the general overhaul of the system, the MTA removed the double letter system, claiming it was confusing. The line naming system remains to this day, with no easy way of differentiating the expresses and locals. There are occasional changes in the signage, such as the number or letter being displayed in a diamond rather than a circle, but these are rarely adhered to.

GET TO IT, ALREADY!
Yeesh. Ok, here you go.

BY THE WAY, WHO DID IT?
Freddo, subway historian extraordinaire
Chris-O, subway historian slightly less extraordinaire
with help from:
Purvis, subway historian extraordinaire who msgs corrections and info
gloinson, yet another S.H.E., emailing corrections and info
AND
http://www.nycsubway.org
http://www.quuxuum.org/~joekor/traintoplane.htm
Stan Fischler, Uptown, Downtown. Hawthorne Books, 1976
Brian J. Cudahy, Under The Sidewalks Of New York (Revised). The Stephen Greene Press, 1988
Clifton Hood, 722 Miles: The Building Of The Subways And How They Transformed New York. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.

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