Missing Hamptons Subway Car Has Been Found

SCENE ON THE SUBWAY

Hamptons Whodunit author Helen Harrison was seen boarding the subway at the Sag Harbor station, bound, she said, for Tupelo, Mississippi. Whether her response was cryptic or confused is a mystery. Science writer Dava Sobel went to Montauk from East Hampton to eat at Gosman’s last Saturday, she said. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was on the subway between Southampton and Water Mill, headed to Bridgehampton to see his daughter practice for the Hampton Classic Horse Show.

MISSING SUBWAY CAR FOUND

One of our subway cars did not come back to the Montauk yard at the end of the day last Wednesday. It was car No. 426621. We have 34 cars in our system. Arriving back were just 33 cars. A manhunt ensued for the missing car, which it was figured would have to be somewhere on our 91-mile system, but a thorough search, even into the sewers, storage rooms, tunnels and bowels of the system, turned up nothing. Missing with it was the motorman for that car, Peter Charles Hootwinkle, a 23-year veteran motorman from Hampton Bays.

It seemed incredible that this subway car would have vanished into thin air, considering there is no way out of the subway system except up the escalators and the car weighs 82,000 pounds, but that’s where matters stood for most of the week. Then, on Monday, the subway car turned up in Boston, on a track siding in the Scollay Square Station. There was no sign of Mr. Hootwinkle, but there was a note on the motorman’s accelerator stick. It read, “Here, there and everywhere. When you solve this crime, you will have a fine old time.” It was unsigned. Does anyone know what this might mean?

The Hamptons Subway system is looking for psychics, levitators and space-time transporter people to help solve this problem.

TRACK OILERS AT WORK

As the new track replacing the 10-year-old worn track is laid between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. every night when the subway system is closed, the rail haulers, crane operators, bulldozer drivers and steel-driving men come out to do their rat-a-tat work. But now there is a second crew on the job, not paid for by the Hamptons Subway system, but paid with checks from the federal government as part of their new transportation improvement program.

Those in this second crew — 50 strong young men and women with steel wool and 10W-30 motor oil —  scrub and polish away on the brand new tracks directly behind the steel-driving men, oiling up the tracks to keep the screeching sound at a minimum for the straphangers as the trains come through in the morning. These track oilers, as they are called, are an offshoot of President Joe Biden’s shovel-ready section of the program and they are fiercely determined to help soften this harsh noise for our valuable subway riders’ sensitive ears. So far, the work has been completed between Amagansett and Mecox, and as anyone who has ridden in those cars the next day can report, the sound is heaven on earth — just a delicate little hum, even around the corners. It does get worse by afternoon, however, but that is another matter.

Bravo, President Biden.

TIME TRIALS LEAD TO DISASTER

Last Wednesday night at 3 a.m., when our service was suspended for a few hours for maintenance, we had only a few employees out on the system. Apparently, for the last week, four of our motormen have been engaging in time trials — a sort of train race where one particular motorman races around the entire subway circuit while others have stopwatches out to see what the best time could be.

In ordinary circumstances, the leisurely subway time to go around the loop from Montauk to Westhampton to Sag Harbor and back to Montauk takes about two hours. The four motormen were vying to see if anybody could break the 40-minute barrier. Apparently, they were coming close.

To break the barrier, trains would have to go around the system at speeds in excess of 70 miles an hour. They were not designed to do that. The result of this is that one of the motormen, who will remain nameless until his family can be informed, is now in Stony Brook Southampton Hospital and the three other motormen, deliriously happy, are there visiting him. He did break the 40-minute barrier.

The result of all this is that we are now short eight cars on the system and there will be delays for at least the next few days. We apologize to our regular riders.

NEW FRITTATA SERVICE

Frittata sandwiches, a specialty of the mountain tribes of Ecuador, are now being offered in our dining car, according to Biff Aspinall, the owner of the franchise operating that service.

COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE

I continue to spend time up here in Anchorage, Alaska, having been selected to be on the committee to assist the governor in accomplishing the pet project she’s had in mind and wishes to have in place before leaving office — the approval for a plan to build a subway system under that fair city.

The real challenge, of course, is that the ground under Anchorage is frozen year around, except for three weeks in July. But if the committee is successful and all the planning goes as planned, next year, during the summer, a 22-mile-long subway system will be built like magic in just 21 days. The cost will be $22 billion and will involve 23,412 construction workers working around the clock during those three weeks, but the governor is sure this can be done.

In any case, I have been selected to be on this committee by the governor herself, since the Hamptons Subway system is one of the smallest systems in America; the Anchorage one will be, too. I will be back from Anchorage probably next week, long before any ready shovel gets sharpened in preparation for July’s “Big and Fast Dig,” of course. Presently, I am helping the governor pack. The governor is moving to Hampton Bays, the jumping-off for beginning the 2024 senatorial bid before the week is out.