Hidden world of transit

Most New York City subway riders never wonder where the giant metal cars come from or where they go after their last stop. A new photography exhibition reveals these hidden spaces.

Exhibition across five stations

Commissioned by MTA Arts and Design, In Service: MTA Photographs by Christopher Payne is the agency's first systemwide photography exhibition. Fifty-two light boxes display large photographs across five Manhattan and Brooklyn locations.

Five display locations

The photographs appear at Grand Central Madison, Grand Central Dining Concourse, forty-two Street Bryant Park, Bowling Green, and Atlantic Avenue Barclays Center.

Payne's obsession begins

Photographer Christopher Payne, a resident of Inwood, became captivated by the two hundred seventh Street Overhaul Shop, a forty-three acre complex built from the late nineteen twenties through the early nineteen thirties where subway cars…

The R sixty-two trains

The two hundred seventh Street shop services the R sixty-two trains, the stainless steel orange-seated cars that ride the numbered lines.

From personal project to Times

Payne's documentation of these spaces began as a personal project before becoming the basis for a story for The New York Times.

Access to factories nationwide

Working with the MTA gave Payne unprecedented access to shops across New York City and factories around the country that help build New York's transit cars.

Partially assembled cars

The exhibition features images including a partially assembled car at a subway train factory in Nebraska, showing the manufacturing process that builds New York's transit vehicles.

Workers in bus factory

The photographs capture a moment of friendship between workers in a bus factory in Minnesota, documenting the human side of transit vehicle manufacturing.

Locomotive factory images

Simpler photographs from a locomotive factory in California document work for the Long Island Rail Road and MetroNorth, expanding the exhibition beyond subway cars.

Ambassador for the city

Payne tells Fast Company he loved being an ambassador for New York City, telling factory workers making these vehicles that he rides them every morning and knows exactly where he sits.

“I loved sort of being an ambassador of New York City and being able to say to the people making these vehicles that we use every day, you know 'I ride that every morning' and 'that's where I sit'.”