Don Harold, a subway aficionado who sometimes used subterfuge to save vintage train cars from the junkyard — cars that are now among the star attractions of the New York Transit Museum in Downtown Brooklyn — died on June 14 in a nursing home in Bayside, Queens.
Mr. Harold, whose maternal grandfather was a Brooklyn trolley motorman and inspector, adored the hulking relics that once rumbled and screeched on subway and elevated tracks.
“When she was falling apart, they fixed her,” he said in an interview with The New York Times in 2003.
“You don’t sell her for scrap.”He got his chance to save train cars when he was hired in 1965 in the public affairs office of the city’s Transit Authority.
His supervisor already knew about his passion for the old rolling stock and felt that he could be an effective preservationist.
Persons:
Don Harold, Downtown Brooklyn —, Thomas Jablonski, Harold, ”
Organizations:
New York Transit Museum, The New York Times, city’s Transit Authority
Locations:
Downtown Brooklyn, Bayside , Queens, Brooklyn, of