In their half-century on New York’s tracks, the low-voltage subway cars saw two world wars, two World’s Fairs and 20 world championships from the Yankees.
The dark green-painted steel cars known as Lo-Vs were named after their low-voltage propulsion control, a system that brought huge safety gains for the crews of what was then the Interborough Rapid Transit Co.
“In these cars, the propulsion was controlled from the batteries underneath the train, rather than that voltage coming from the third rail,” said Polly Desjarlais, an education assistant at the New York Transit Museum. “It made for safer train crews and safer crews in the yards and shops when it came to switching trains around and connecting them together.”
The MTA will be celebrating the train car’s 100th birthday Sunday at a “Party on Wheels” in the agency’s New York Transit Museum. The event is the museum’s fourth annual family benefit and will be commemorated with the Lo-V car’s return to service — sort of. A Lo-V train will run from the museum, at the decommissioned Court Street station, to Hoyt-Schermerhorn station and back. Breakfast and cake will be served.
“It’s a great opportunity to come out and, in a fun way, to support the museum and what we do all year-round,” said museum director Concetta Bencivenga. “We love being a much-beloved community organization and this fund-raiser is a natural response to make sure we have different ways for people to come out and support.”
The Lo-V is the oldest subway car to be living out its retirement in the Transit Museum after they were taken out of service in the late 1960s. Even as they were phased out for the more modern-looking R12 model, the Lo-Vs still had a place in New Yorkers’ hearts.
“I have conversations with people who’d say, ‘Oh no, I only rode the Lo-Vs because those were my favorite,’ ” Desjarlais said, “and they would transverse the city just to ride those trains.”
