Trespassers are again moving — and crashing — subway trains beneath the city, with at least two instances of attempted subway joyriding in the past two weeks, the Daily News has learned.
In one instance, the MTA says new techniques kept the joyriders from getting far. But in another, at least one train remains out of service following a collision.
On Saturday evening — Halloween — a suspected trespasser attempted to move a parked, 10-car R train from storage tracks beneath the 75th Ave. stop in Forest Hills on the Queens Boulevard Line.
Around 7:30 p.m., a train operator moving another subway along the same set of storage tracks reported the 10-car train was out of place, and a side window was open on the lead car. Police were notified, and an NYPD officer and transit supervisor responded to the scene, a source with knowledge of the incident told the Daily News.
Upon investigation, the train was discovered to have traveled through a red signal, hitting an emergency trip-stop on the tracks. The trip-stop engaged the train’s emergency brakes, bringing it to a halt approximately 15 feet from where it had started. Sources tell the Daily News the brief run caused no damage to the train.
Michael Cortez, a spokesman for the MTA said the agency credited the relatively short distance of the train’s movement to “new techniques” for securing parked subways. Cortez would not elaborate on the methods, citing security concerns.
But a number of older subway cars in Brooklyn did not fare so well last weekend, when a suspected trespasser caused a multi-train collision.
The subway smashup took place in the early morning hours of October 24, between the Ave. M and Kings Highway stations on the B and Q lines, a source told The News.
The MTA’s rail control center dispatched a supervisor to the site last Saturday after a social media report indicated that a group of R-68 cars parked along the express tracks — a common weekend practice — had collided.
Once on the scene, train supervisors reported that at least three trains appeared to have been involved in a collision. Two of the trains appeared to have coupled with one another. A third showed damage to its coupler, and someone had vandalized one of the trains brake cylinders.
The two trains coupled together showed signs of a “hard impact,” a source told the Daily News. Access panel doors inside the train appeared to have flown open due to the force of the impact. The ridged surfaces on the trains’ bumpers — meant to interlock during a collision and prevent one train from climbing onto another — were meshed together.
Photos obtained by the Daily News show the trains coupled together, as well as damage to the “anti-climber” surfaces on one train’s bumper.
At least one of the three trains involved in the Brooklyn collision remains out of service for repairs, a source told The News.
Two youths were spotted along the same stretch of track in Brooklyn hours later, a transit source told the Daily News. It was unclear if their presence was related to the collision.
The NYPD was notified and responded to both incidents. A spokesperson for the department said the Queens incident was being investigated as reckless endangerment and the Brooklyn incident as criminal mischief. Both investigations were ongoing Monday with no arrests yet made.