Staten Island Variety Show. The MTA Staten Island Railway operates on a 14 mile-long 21 station line in Staten Island, New York. The third class of cars built for this line, the Kawasaki R-211S, made its debut for the public on Tuesday, October 8, 2024 (N-SIR 100-101-102-103-104-S). This 75 car order of 5-car sets will be the replacement for the 1971-1973 St. Louis Car Company built R-44S/ME-2 fleet (originally 52 cars, later supplemented with 12 former MTA NYCT Subway R-44 cars). There are few differences between the R-211A cars operating on the "A Line" and these R-211S cars, the main one is that the R-211S cars have ATC (track-circuit-based automatic train control) and the R-211A have CBTC (communications-based train control). There is currently a second 5-car set on the property, cars SIR 105-109, with more cars planned to arrive soon. A lucky "group shot" presented itself at the St. George terminal with R-211S 104, R-44S 388 (ex-NYCT Subway) and R-44S 430 sitting next to each other that morning.
