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Radio Shack Selling Subway Cars on eBay
David Cantrell writes "The Radio Shack Corporation (formerly the Tandy Corporation) headquarters in Fort Worth, TX was one of the only companies in the world to have its own private subway system. Its main purpose in life was to move employees from their parked cars to the office building. About a year or so ago, Radio Shack decided the subway system was no longer needed and they shut it down permanently. Well, they are now selling the subway cars on eBay. For $5000US, you can get your very own Radio Shack Subway Car. Rails sold separately. Click for the eBay auction page."
Are they going to insist I give them my phone number and try to sell me batteries with it?
I am sorry to say that these so-called subway cars are fake. They are clean, with no graffiti. That is simply impossible.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Shipping Will not ship.
What kind of service is this?
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Need to order about 25000 AA bateries to power one of these babies ??
Also does anyone know where I can get a good repetive recording of 'Mind the gap' so my dream to replicate a london subway station can finally become a reality.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Reminds me of the plot to Half Life... Are they selling a reactor that'll open a portal to some big headed lightning monster?
I always thought it would be a cool project to convert a bunch of subway cars into a liveable house. I especially think it would look pretty snazzy in the middle of one of those pre-planned developments, with all the houses that look alike, and your subway car network right next to them.
$5,000 seems like a reasonable price for such a thing. Assuming you'd need between 5 and 10 cars, thats not so expensive for building your own house.
However, the logistics involved in transporting a 40,000 lb subway car would probably make such a project impossible.
(ducks and hides!) :-)
I never heard of such a thing. I think this is the subway in question. Some pictures and a movie on that site. Pretty cool, but then again, nobody has yet bid on ebay which should tell ya something :)
Radio Shack Corporation? This is not the secret name of Black Mesa is it?!
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
I like the nooses convienently placed above each seat, so if you have a sudden bout of realization that you work for Radio Shack, you can quickly put yourself out of your misery. That's a work-perk!
...on crappy old two-rail carts! Buy Monorail! "Well, sir, there's nothing on earth Like a genuine, Bona fide, Electrified, Six-car Monorail!"
I used to ride that subway. The city library is right next to Tandy Towers. I'd park out in the extended lots and ride the Tandy subway into the library.
Hate to see it go, but Fort Worth has grown up a lot in the last fifteen years. I guess they have better arrangements now. Anyone been there recently?
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Can you say "Urban Infiltration?" Methinks I have a new target.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, it's sort of a game: exploring places people are no longer meant to be. Old subways, abandoned factories, campus steam tunnels, etc.. Lots of fun, and certainly more exciting than.. say.. reading slashdot!
A few links:
Infiltration.org
Zone Tour
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
It was sort of half and half. In the parking lot it ran above ground but as you got closer to downtown it went into a rather long tunnel to the station under the Tandy Center.
It was kind of neat but I can see why they would want to get rid of it as it was somewhat pointless. They could only run one train through the tunnel at a time so one could have probably walked the length of the tunnel to the building by the time the train could come pick them up.
The Anti-Blog
Howie, what are you doing in my house, and what are you staring at?
It is a light rail system for most of its track but as it enters the Tandy Center, it goes through a tunnel.
Anyway, the rail system itself is very old and goes back to a previous merchandiser in Fort Worth, Lennings or something similar. They were pretty famous because they were the department store in Fort Worth (and the surrounding small cities) for a while.
It's their loss leader! Don't be fooled!
What could you do with a subway car?
Convert it into a diner, perhaps?
Here's a link I just turned up with a quick google search that has some pics and information about the subway itself. These will be nice tunnels to explore in a few years.
http://web.presby.edu/~jtbell/transit/FtWorth/
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
I grew up riding the Tandy Center Subway (as it was called then). My dad and I would drive in to Fort Worth on Saturdays from the small suburb where we lived, and ride the subway into Tandy Center to go to the Fort Worth library. The main floor of the library was underground, and had an entrace from the Tandy Center mall.
Tandy Center also had a pretty good arcade at the time (at least, by Fort Worth standards).
Ranger96
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.-Ecclesiastes 1:9
Comes from a time when all the technology was banished into a separate structure, as in "transmitter shack", "ham shack" (amateur radio), and so forth. Sometimes it was a literal shack, since technology in every age attracts the geeks and repels the Martha Stewarts.
Aptal soru yoktur; sadece merakli aptallar vardir.
Not to be a grammar nazi, but it was either the only or one of the few. It can't be in both states at once, unless subway cars are now in a state of quantum superposition, which, given their size, is doubtful.
Is it just me, or does anyone else look at eBay auction pictures with a fear in the back of your mind that you will see the naked guy who took the picture reflected somewhere?
The city provides a large infrastructure of rails, and a sophisticated switching system. Citizens pony up for their own (much smaller) 'cars'; they can do whatever they like with the interior of these cars, etc. You register your 'car' and have it installed in the rail system. Make a request and the car goes to the closest station that you're looking for. You give up the convenience of having the 'car' make 100% of the trip between points (i.e. you walk to and from whichever station) but you don't have to drive.
I know, I know... Minority Report. I just really liked the idea of intelligently switched rail traffic in-town, with more traditional free-roaming vehicles outside of urban areas. It makes so much sense.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Shouldn't something like this belong in the Smithsonian or something? From the links offered on eBay, it has quite a history behind it.
If you read the eBay ad carefully -- and know a little about trains and streetcars -- it turns out this was more of a "subway surface streetcar" line than a pure subway. The car itself did not start out life as a subway car; it was an old "PCC" streetcar. Tandy remodeled it extensively in the '70s, basically bringing it down to the bare frame. Thus, any Trolly Museum that would be looking for a PCC will not get much by buying this other than a few spare parts and a frame. Perhaps some museum would want it as a novelty. If you want a good place to see some authentic PCC streetcars still in active service, visit San Francisco -- they purchased a bunch from Philadelphia for tourist attraction.
"Car weighs approximately 40,000 lbs"
.]"
"Winning Bidder is responsible for all shipping costs [. .
Hee hee. Wonder if I could ship it Priority mail for $4.85?
Loomis
"The television is the retina of the mind's eye" - Videodrome
# of bids 0
Apparently Radio Shack hasn't done very good market research on this one. I mean really who's seriously going to bid for a 40,000 pound piece of junk that they won't be able to move.
Anybody know how much it costs to ship a 40,000 pound peice of junk?
I never understood how the word "Shack" was supposed to convey competence with technology.
When radio's were added to ships early in the last century - they were usually in little 'shacks' on the main deck for several reasons: Better antenna reception, and so the operator could see - to orient the antenna properly, and more importantly, to show-off to the paying passengers that the ship had a 'wireless' on board.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Can I interest you in a RadioShack Service Plan? It will protect your subway car for up to three years! No? Well, I can save you $400 dollars on your purchase, if you're so inclined. All we ask is that you sign up for three years of MSN Internet...
No? Well, would you be interested in a cell pho... yes, I see you have one. How do you like the service. Just fine, huh? Well, we've got some great deals on cellular phones and...
Sir! Sir! You left your subway car!
(I used to work at RadioShack. Ick.)
It lives up to it's name: http://www.sanspoint.com
Make it a short-term day care center for a mall, department store, gym or something.
When I was a kid, the church I went to converted a bus into a day care center, complete with wood stove to keep it warm. The church didn't have their own building, so they needed something mobile. Hey that's better than going to the services in the funeral home it was parked in front of.
Also, I am sure there are a multitude of railroad history parks around the country that could use it, if they could afford it.
Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -FB
In this modern world, $5000 buys you either a second-hand subway or a DIY cruise missile.
Hmm.... tough choice.
--
Rune
"Remodeled in 1974 by RadioShack/Tandy Corporation to pattern design after Bay Area Rapid Transit vehicles operating in the San Francisco Bay area."
;)
Those things look nothing like the BART cars. First off, BART trains are 3-10 cars, and you can move between cars if you like, and only a couple seats are back against the wall (near the doors, for seniors & disabled folks)
And BART knew better than to use that ungodly red color. What is it with companies in Texas using awful paint schemes? Southwest Airlines is next on the list.. "Hey, we got a bunch of this brownish paint.. really cheap!"
My father used to work for Tandy at that office in the early 80's as a system programmer on the Tandem until he had a stroke. I remember riding those subways to his office when I was a little kid and he would show me around the data processing center. We also used to go ice skating at the Tandy Center and my sister and I would love riding on those little subways. For me, this is an era gone by.
Now I am a programmer myself and it gives me a great deal of pride to be a chip off the old block.
Lord, bless my users that they may stop being such fucking idiots!!
The Tandy Subway (and other areas around the Tandy headquarters) are featured in the movie "The Lathe of Heaven", based on Ursula le Guin's book of the same title. Buy a car, and own a piece of sci-fi history...
The PCC cars are still in service on part of the Boston mass transit system. There is a short (two miles long) streetcar line on the southern portion of the Red Line. After the normal heavy rail subway ends at Ashmont, you can board a PCC to travel to Mattapan. From what I understand they haven't really been renovated since World War II. Eventually the MBTA is supposed to update the line, but the way things go in Boston, that could be years from now...
www.tealeaves.org "All you need is love." -
I bet this guy and this guy (builders of monorail and roller coaster in their backyards, respectively) are drooling over this auction, and their neighbors are thinking "please god, no".
If IBM decides to sell off some lawnmowers they used to use to trim the grounds around their HQ, will that be "news for nerds, stuff that matters" as well?
I don't know what's worse...this story being on slashdot, or me wasting 2 precious minutes of my lunch hour posting a reply to it.
Queens of the Stone Age - they rule
Do you think i could use this for the train set i set up under my tree at christmas?.....or it could be set up under the tree at rockefeller center....I would go broke buying battries .I wonder if they still give out those battery cards?
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.
Last August during the final days of subway operation I managed to make it down there and snap a bunch of pictures including some of their shop facilities if anyone is interested.