Hey 1SF9: I must agree!!! I too am very excited about the new fleet replacements coming out, but still steadfastly agree that the redbird series is by far the best. Its like the venerable VW Beetle- might be not the prettiest car in the entire world to look at, but still very tough, dependable, durable, with fairly good MDBF numbers, and summed up in a single word, TIMELESS. This is a good word particularly since some are approaching 40 years of age and use.
My favorite livery scheme is however, the classic TA dull silver with blue stripe, although the current "Redbird" red is neat and racy too. The short-lived white was OK too, 'cept it was almost an engraved invitation to every graffitti "writer" artist to come and tag the train as soon as it's new paint dried.
For the nearly $1.6 million per copy the new R-142s and R-142As cost, they obviously have a lot of bells and whistles that will only lead to obvious earlier and more frequent component failure. When you get right down to it, all subway cars are simply at their very core basically carbodies mounted on chassis suspended on steel flanged wheels driven by AC traction motors. Nothing I think we'll ever see will ever constitute a real giant bound in evolution on this principle, all we'll continue to see are minor and for the most part aesthetic and nice to have but not absolutely necessary electronic bells and whistle equipped trains.
The Redbird is the end result of a train designer starting from a fresh piece of paper, following basic and functional lines and form, and not including anything that doesn't absolutely just have to be included. And for being on in revenue service as long as they have been, nothwithstanding rebuilds, the MTA has really gotten their money's worth out of them.
I'm firmly against the ludicrous idea of sending even ONE of these priceless antiques to the bottom of the sea for artificial reefs inasmuch as they'd make a far better reserve fleet, should for example the majority of the R142x's develop some latent design flaw or defect that doesn't make itself known until most or all of them have been delivered and put into service. If this happens and most or all of the Redbird fleet has been scrapped or scuttled, the TA and it's riders will quite simply be SOL and without any real replacements, not unlike the nearly $1 Billion dollars of Grumman Flxibles that had to be sold for nearly nothing (aprx. $4 million) and replaced from scratch with GM RTS' in the 1980s.
Peace and GB, Thomas :-)