Hamptons Subway Newsletter: March 26–April 2, 2015

Week of March 26–April 2, 2015
Riders this past week: 8,613
Rider miles this past week: 98,313

DOWN IN THE TUBE
Katie Couric, Matt Lauer and Anderson Cooper were seen chatting and riding together from Wainscott to Bridgehampton last Wednesday afternoon on the B Train. Our spotter heard the word “Bulgaria” several times, but nothing about Bulgaria has been in the news recently. Michael Bloomberg was riding alone from Noyac to Southampton on Tuesday morning reading a copy of Dan’s Papers tucked inside a copy of The Wall Street Journal.

NEW SUBWAY LINE?
Workers on the Hamptons Subway have stumbled on a long unused tunnel, which goes off from the main line into the darkness to what may be an unknown subway stop. The discovery was made last Wednesday at 3 a.m. by maintenance men, out cleaning at that hour with the system shut for the night.

Everyone knows about the old rusty subway tracks that head south off the main line halfway between Bridgehampton and Water Mill, but as the tracks shortly disappear under a huge steel door tightly bolted and rusted shut in the tunnel wall, it had been thought, until now, there was just a storeroom back there that needed trackage for freight car deliveries.

But late last Wednesday night, when a new maintenance man who didn’t know the door was frozen shut simply opened it, it was found that instead of a storeroom, the tracks went down a long tunnel into the darkness. The maintenance men reported this to headquarters the next morning, and a team of men with flashlights were assembled who walked down the trackage but, after two miles, when they heard spooky voices in the distance, they turned back. At this point the matter was turned over to the Hamptons Police, who in turn have turned it over to the County Detectives who have turned it over to the State Police, who’ve turned it over to the National Guard, but so far, it has all just been talk about who’s going to go down there to see what’s what.

PRANK
Four teenagers were arrested on Wednesday, March 25 for secretly going down the regular tunnel between Westhampton Beach and Quogue with a boom box radio at midnight to turn on a recording of a steam locomotive at full volume. For the next 20 minutes, authorities were convinced something was coming into one of the two stations, but when nothing did, the authorities went down the tracks and arrested the teenagers who said they only did it because it was April Fools’ Day and it would be a lot of fun, which it was. When told they were a week early for April Fools’ Day, they said “Oh.” They were arrested and are to be tried as adults.

RESEARCH PAPER PUBLISHED
That team of researchers from the University of Miami, down here last September at Hamptons Subway giving out little plastic baggies of either M&Ms or raw carrot sticks to children coming through the turnstiles for 10 days, has had their findings published in the New Jersey Magazine of Science. The children preferred the M&M’s bags by a margin of eleven to one. A surprising finding was that in 48.3 percent of the cases, the adults accompanying the children required the children to share the M&M’s while none asked for the carrot sticks.

COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE
We regret that we’ve had to raise the fares to $2.75 a ride, but everybody has noticed that the trains break down with some frequency now. We need the money for repairs. We expect breakdowns to stop when the extra income comes through.

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