Subway Buffs Keep Rolling Along : 29-Hour Ride Covers All of New York’s 466 Stations

Three subway buffs happily finished a more than daylong underground tour of New York on Tuesday after passing through every one of the city’s 466 subway stations in what was said to be the longest subway ride in U.S. history.

The trip took 29 hours, 47 minutes and 12 seconds.

“This is it,” a triumphant Rick Temple said as he and his two friends stepped off the No. 7 train at the Main Street-Flushing station.

The three emerged unscathed, their trip unspoiled by muggers, derailments or any of the other problems that have given the New York City subway system an unsavory reputation.

Not as Fast as Hoped

But the finish was not trouble free: the trio had intended to alight at the Roosevelt Avenue station but were forced to double back and go to Main Street-Flushing because of service problems.

Nor did they complete the trip as swiftly as they had hoped. When they departed from the Jamaica-Van Wyck station at 6:20 a.m. Monday, equipped with a camera, tape recorder, hand warmer, books and orange juice, they had expected to be on the rails for 27 hours.

Temple, 28, Phil Vanner, 25, and Tom Murphy, 28, planned their journey with careful attention to detail, including where to buy food without passing through a turnstile.

But they intended to limit their intake of food and drink, explained Temple’s mother, Janice, “because there aren’t too many bathrooms in the stations, and they (didn’t) want to exit.”

Three Stations Added

Murphy, who works days as a security guard and attends college at night, and Temple and Vanner, who are computer analysts, got a chance to break the record because the Transit Authority on Sunday opened three new stations in Queens, the first such additions in 20 years.

With 466 stations and 232 miles of track, New York City’s subway system is easily the nation’s largest, and by some measures--including the number of cars and stations--the world’s largest.

Working with schedules and maps, the three planned a route that let them pass through every station without ever leaving the system.

Boy Scout Badges

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the fastest trip through the New York system is 21 hours, 8 minutes and 30 seconds, set by Mayer Wiesen and Charles Emerson on Oct. 8, 1973.