The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)  announced that four of the recently retired R-32 subway cars, nicknamed the Brightliners, began their final journey. On February 28 the cars were transferred from the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal to the 65th Street Yard by New York New Jersey (NYNJ) Rail locomotive, via 1st Av this morning.  Once at the NYNJ rail yard, the R-32 cars will be disassembled over approximately four days by separating the car bodies from the trucks. They will then be placed and secured onto Frontier Industrial Corporation’s flat cars.

Next week, the cars will be floated across the Hudson River on a Port Authority barge to Jersey City where they will be placed onto CSX freight trains for shipment to Ohio, where they will be scrapped. The trucks will remain in Brooklyn, destined for a local scrap yard.

About the R-32s: The R-32s were the first large fleet of mass-produced stainless-steel cars purchased by NYCT, comprising a total of 600 cars. Built in Philadelphia by the Budd Company, they were nicknamed the Brightliners because of their washboard-like stainless steel exteriors. The first revenue train ran on Sep. 14, 1964.

-via Press Release