Hamptons Subway Car Has Gone Missing

SCENE ON THE SUBWAY

Steven Spielberg was seen along with Tom Hanks getting off the subway at the Georgica station last Wednesday. Christie Brinkley was seen Friday afternoon on the westbound platform in Bridgehampton waiting for a train, which soon came, after which she boarded.

WHEW!

Well, it’s been a long pull getting the subway up and running with its summer-long offerings. The spurs that take riders from Main Street in East Hampton to Main Beach are running.  So are the spurs that take riders from Jobs Lane to Coopers Beach in Southampton. Also up and running is Georgica station, with its butlers, hot tubs, steam room and dim sum tastings. It’s going to be a fine summer, unless you don’t like to be herded onto the trains by our young boxing glove-wearing pushers. Well, so it goes.

SUBWAY CAR MISSING

Hamptons Subway Commissioner Bill Aspinall is asking everyone to keep an eye out for a subway car that has gone missing. It had been added to the back to make a five-car subway train at the Montauk Yards by the dispatcher and left the yards at 7:49 a.m. last Thursday for its full 90-minute rush hour run out to Westhampton Beach and back on schedule. But when the train returned and was turned around for a second scheduled run at 11:14 a.m., the train had only four cars.

Alerts immediately went out to all points to be on the lookout for this last car, particularly since if it had come unhooked but remained on the tracks, it could have been hit from behind, with disastrous effects to the passengers in it.

However, as it turned out, there have been no other problems anywhere on the line either then or since. The car is easily identified because it has a long scratch down its left side that was made about four months ago by some angry passenger who keyed it with his car keys at some point. It also bears the number “Car Number 82” on the front and back, just below the light.

The motorman who drove the train that morning said he did not hear anything unusual while taking the train out but did notice that late in the run the train seemed to accelerate faster than it had been doing earlier in the run when he stepped on the gas. Other than that he noticed nothing unusual.

17 LOCAL RESIDENTS MISSING

Hamptons Subway has learned that 17 local residents did not show up at their respective places of work last Thursday morning and police have issued a missing persons report for them, but have also called us because all of them apparently take the Hamptons Subway when they go to work. This is just a coincidence, of course, but we thought we would pass it along. For a complete list of the passengers, call the Suffolk County Detective Agency and ask for Linda.

LAWSUITS ABOUT SUBWAY GRATINGS

Two local residents have filed a lawsuit about the subway ventilation gratings on the sidewalks and lawns that let the air in and out of the subway platforms from above. One is from a woman named Harriet Mallow-Cohen from Bay Shore who says she caught her high heels in one of the gratings in Hampton Bays one day back in 2017, thus twisting her ankle.

Another is from a man named Jonathan Billings of Quogue who says he was able to hear people on the platform below talking to one another on June 4, 2023 and the conversation had much obscene language which offended him greatly.

A third lawsuit was filed by Oscar Dellbenevina of Amagansett who says that during a snowstorm on Jan. 3, 2006, somebody pushing a snow shovel above caused snow to come down through the grating to hit him on the head and he has had headaches to this day.

Coincidentally with all of this, Hamptons Subway is currently making a map that will show the locations of all subway gratings in the system. Said map expected to be completed next week.

Subway gratings are in the ceilings of all platforms and tunnels as part of the air circulation program for the subway system. They are very old, all having been put in back in 1931 when the subway was built, and it is possible that many of them, which are located on lawns of the rich and famous as well as the homes of the poor and anonymous, have, it turns out, been covered over by sod by certain dastardly homeowners.

It may be that on occasions where certain subway riders waiting for trains on platforms have fainted and needed medical assistance that the cause might be the covering over of these air circulation grates. It happens to be illegal to cover this. We will know soon what’s what.

LONER ARRESTED

A man was found walking through the subway tunnel between Napeague and Amagansett carrying some sort of electronic device. Spotted by a motorman, subway police arrested him at which time he claimed that the electronic device, which was the size of a cell phone, was actually a time travel machine. He was taken to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital for observation.

COMMISSIONER BILL ASPINALL’S MESSAGE

I am as baffled as anybody as to how an entire subway car could have disappeared while on one of its regular runs last Thursday. Had I not been in the South of France on that particular day, but in my office, I would have immediately run downstairs and hopped on the next train and found out what was going on, toot sweet, you betcha. When we find this car, heads will roll.