It was a gloomy, cloudy day. I was working on my Psychology homework when I saw this! The cold front was finally moving through my area, picking up the dark clouds as it went. The sun came out.
Sun peeking behind the dark clouds
That is something you don’t see everyday.
Seen at Times Square – 42 Street on the IRT West Side Line (1 2 3)
On my way home from college today, I spotted this signal when leaving the train.
This signal was most likely converted straight from the IRT style signal.
Back way back when, when the MTA didn’t exist yet, and the subway system was split into two (later three companies), the IRT stood out in that their signal aspects were modeled more similarly to traditional railroads. Their aspects looked like this:
IRT “Homeball” signal displaying “Proceed on Main Route.” Drawing taken from nycsubway.org
Whereas the the other company, the BMT, used this:
BMT/IND “Homeball” Signal displaying “Proceed on Main Route.” Drawing from nycsubway.org
For a more complete understanding of the signal aspects, check out this article: https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/Subway_Signals:_Home_Signals
When the city-owned transportation system, the IND, was built in the late 1920s, it followed the BMT standards in their engineering designs (The speculation why will remain for a future post!) Thus, when the city gobbled up the BMT and IRT in the late 1940s (I want to say 1947, but I’m not sure as of writing), naturally it made sense to convert the signals of the IRT to match those of the BMT and the IND, rather than convert all the BMT/IND signals to match IRT specifications.
The signal at Times Square I saw today was most likely a remnant of that conversion. To get the job done without too much work, they simply replaced the top green light with a yellow light to match a traditional BMT/IND style signal and rewired it as such. This way they don’t have to swap all the lights to completely match one such signal, and also do not need to rewire too much of the signal circuitry beneath it.
