R62A is a series of New York City Subway cars, built by Bombardier in Montreal, Quebec, with final assembly done in Barre, Vermont. The R62A series was a continuation of the R62 order. These 825 cars were built between 1984 and 1987 and entered service between 1985 and 1988. They replaced the R17/21/22 cars, which were retired by early 1988.
The R62A series are numbered 1651-2475. Numbers 1901-2155 are single cars and run on the 7 service to make 11-car trains. Some 1900-series cars run on the 42nd Street Shuttle. All other cars are in five-car sets.
R62A cars currently run on the 1 service (based at the 240th Street Yard in the Bronx), 7 service (based at Corona Yard in Queens), and the 42nd Street Shuttle (based at Mosholu Yard, Bronx).
Various cars feature blue colored bucket seats and currently operate on the 7. All of the cars on the 7 feature LED lights around the rollsign where the number 7 (New York City Subway service) is indicated to help riders distinguish between an express train (red diamonds) and a local train (green circle). This eliminates the frequent confusion of whether a train is local or express. These are featured on the window rollsigns of these cars.car 1909 was wrecked in 1996 and removed from the property and disposed of in 2001.
An interesting fact to note is that the R62A uses a different brake package than the majority of the fleet. Known as the "COBRA" configuration, it involves utilizing friction brakes on only one of the two trucks per car, meaning that there are no friction brakes on the number two truck of each car. This decreases overall wheel tread wear and dust resulting from brake applications, which in turn reduces maintenance costs. The R62A's brakes are manufactured by the New York Air Brake Company.
| R62A 42nd Street Shuttle Train with the new MTA capital plan advertisements | 7 Train with the upgraded side curtain LED displays to help ease confusion from the Local and Express train. Green circle denotes a local train. | Red diamond denotes an express train. These two pictures are from consecutive trains taken at Grand Central on May 4th, 2009 |