R38 (New York City Subway car)

The R38 was a New York City Subway car model built by the St. Louis Car Company from 1966 to 1967 for the IND/BMT B Division. Two hundred were built in married pairs. The R38s were built to supply extra trains for service changes resulting from the 1967 opening of the Chrystie Street Connection. The R38 was the second subway car order to be built with stainless steel exteriors, and the first subway car fleet to have air conditioning installed. The first R38s entered service on August 23, 1966. In 1987–1988, all R38s were rebuilt by General Electric. The R160 order replaced the entire fleet of R38s, the last of which ran on March 18, 2009. After retirement, all cars but one pair, which is preserved by the New York Transit Museum, were stripped and sunken as artificial reefs. The R38s were numbered 3950–4149. The cars were arranged in "married pairs" of two cars semi-permanently coupled together by a drawbar. Even-numbered cars were known as "B" cars, while odd-numbered cars were known as "A" cars. The R38 was the second subway car order to be built with stainless steel exteriors, the first being the R32 order in 1964. The cars were built with aluminium roofs, vandal-proof fiberglass seats, and with indirect fluorescent lighting, which also provided illumination of the advertisement cards as well, a similar setup to the last 150 R32 cars delivered in 1965 numbered 3800–3949. The R38 was the first successful subway car fleet to have air conditioning installed after earlier prototypes failed on older subway cars. The last ten cars delivered (4140–4149) came factory equipped with Stone-Safety 10-ton split system air conditioning system featuring the compressor/condenser units mounted under the cars, while the evaporator units were installed on the top interior ends of the car in 1967. The first six air conditioned cars came into service on the F train on July 19, 1967. The six-week experiment was a success after past failures, and air conditioning would soon, but not immediately, become standard equipment on new rolling stock built for the system, since the first 200 R40 cars were built without air conditioning.