Back to the bad old days? Graffiti-marred railway car spotted on Staten Island

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – A funny thing happened when a half-century-old Staten Island Railway car was earmarked for the scrap heap: it got defaced with graffiti.

Staten Islanders traveling on Bay Street between Clifton and Stapleton may have caught sight of the old SIR train car, which is parked in a fenced off area on the North Shore along the railway line.

The car, numbered 466, is marred with vivid orange and yellow tags and other graffiti, looking like it traveled forward in time from the 1970s and 1980s, when graffiti was a massive problem throughout the New York City mass transit system.

The windows and most of the doors of the train are covered with plywood. One of the train door spaces is open, however, providing a tantalizing, if long-distance, look into the old railway car.

The R44 model train car, which was in service from 1973 until 2022, was decommissioned as the Staten Island Railway receives a fleet of 75 brand new rail cars, known as the R211 model, according to MTA spokesperson David Steckel.

Steckel said the old train car has a number of obsolete components.

“With the new fleet coming onto the railroad, this car was identified to be scrapped,” he said.

The train, free of graffiti at the time, according to Steckel, was brought to its current location on a non-passenger MTA railroad siding to await removal by a scrapping company. That’s expected by the end of the month.

“But crews will remove the graffiti sooner than that,” Steckel said. “The recent vandalism has been reported to investigative authorities.”

The new railroad cars debuted on Staten Island last October, with an unveiling at the Clifton Car Maintenance Shop.

The cars include wider doors that should make passenger entrances and exits faster, reducing station stop times.

The 50-year-old R44 train cars were the oldest remaining rolling stock in the MTA system. The agency plans to phase out all the old cars here by the end of 2024.