It seems odd to everyone but me, but I have always been a subway and mass transit buff (and its deterioration the past few years is severely disappointing, still I don’t think it’s past the point of no return) and, while I do pay attention to various changes in the rolling stock and usually attend when the old cars are rolled out on special occasions…I seem to pay more attention to the stations than anything else.
When the Court Square station on the #7 Flushing Line (formerly 45th Road station) was rehabilitated in the 2000s and given free transfers to the two IND routes close to it, the E/M and the G, it also received an escalator (that breaks down a lot) and new lamp stanchions on the platform.
As you can see these lamps imitated early BMT stanchions, that came with the lamp “hoods” that protected incandescent bulbs. These hoods were built around yellow sodium fixtures. However, the MTA decided to switch out the sodiums and replace them with LEDs. Apparently the hoods were incompatible with LED bulbs and so, the platform lamps all look like the ones in the background, sans hoods. I liked the hoods, as they harked back to the early days of subwaying, but time marches on.
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6/12/23
1 comment
Those led lights must have been annoying the neighbors. The last time I passed the north end of the Manhattan bound platform, kind of crude looking sheet metal shields had been installed on the back of the led fixtures apparently to eliminate light trespass.