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During extensive weekend trackwork at the interlocking north of 59 St–Columbus Cir as part of the Eighth Avenue CBTC project, the A train is running via the 6th Avenue line, then the Second Avenue Subway to 96 St. That means 2AS is being serviced by R46, R143s and most notably, R211s during the diversion.

Of course, in typical 96 St fashion, dispatch is a total mess. Trains were bunching (impressive on a high-headway line like the weekend A) and leaving late the entire time I was there.

Riding R211s on the Q and 6 Av line was really fun. I would love to have been able to ride it express on 6 Av, but even on the local, the R211s have the juice!

I headed up on Saturday afternoon to get some pictures. On the way, I was treated to a 15 minute wait at 63 St Lex, during which the countdown clocks showed only F trains, failed, then came back and showed one F train in 32 minutes. I’m pretty sure the next F was closer than that, but I didn’t stay around to find out.

Nothing all that unusual here. 2AS is used to R46s

R143 Q train! Excuse the awful photo, I had to do a lot of tweaking to get the Q to be legible.

Q train riders can only dream of modern internal wayfinding

Probably my favorite photo of the day. Trains were really inconsistently signed up as A trains to various terminals, Q trains, shuttles and a bunch of other stuff

The entire station smelled like paint when this set came through. We think it was sitting in the pocket tracks north of 96 St for monday Q service and got painted by trespassers there. Vandalism is a bummer when it takes a train OOS, but having such a colorful train in the very clean stations was cool!