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Inside the Massive Repair Shops Where Subway Cars Go for a Makeover

An in-depth look at the process that overhauls every single wheel,
motor, brake, axle, wire and door on every car in the New York City
system.

Inside the Massive Repair Shops Where Subway Cars Go for a Makeover

An in-depth look at the process that overhauls every single wheel,
motor, brake, axle, wire and door on every car in the New York City
system.

Photographs by Christopher Payne
Text by David Waldstein

March 1, 2024
[00SUBWAY-REPAIR-SHOP-01-wzhq-mobileMasterAt3x-v3]

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Inside the Massive Repair Shops Where Subway Cars Go for a Makeover

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By Christopher Payne and David Waldstein

March 1, 2024

The average New York City subway car travels roughly 53,000 miles per
year across some of the oldest transit infrastructure in the world.
Rumbling through a web of grungy tunnels and weather-beaten elevated
tracks, the cars are subjected to overcrowding, underfunding,
vandalism, garbage and routine wear and tear.

Sometimes it's a marvel the system functions at all.

ImageTwo workers with blue helmets, Hemchandra Singh (wearing a green
shirt) and Joshua Zailabdeen (wearing a blue striped polo) use a
pneumatic lift to stack subway wheels, each the size of truck tire.
Hemchandra Singh (left) and Joshua Zailabdeen stacking old subway
wheels to be recycled.

Breakdowns do occur, but the number might be a lot higher if not for
a diverse legion of technical specialists who keep the moving parts
doing just that -- moving.

Every single wheel, motor, brake, axle, wire and door on every subway
car gets completely refurbished every six to 12 years at the Coney
Island Overhaul Shop in Brooklyn or its sister facility at 207th
Street in Manhattan. The work is part of a scheduled maintenance
program, introduced in 1989 and designed to prevent breakdowns before
they occur.

The system works much like a scheduled tuneup on an automobile.
Trains roll into the facilities, where they are disassembled,
reconditioned to near-factory specifications, and then sent back out
into a railroad that functions as New York's vascular system, pumping
more than a billion riders across 345 million miles each year, 24
hours a day, every day.

Image
Motors being disassembled before their overhaul begins.

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