I wanted to conclude my coverage of subways from the New York Transit Museum with this blue and white beauty. It’s the train I remember fondly.

The unique blue and white configuration was introduced in 1963 for the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair. The Number 7 train ran from Times Square in Manhattan to Flushing, Queens. The station for the World’s Fair was the second-to-last stop in Queens. The blue and white subway cars were designed specifically for the Number 7 line and nicknamed the Bluebirds.

I rode the Number 7 every day to high school, and including all the other times I’ve ridden it, I must have taken the Number 7 at least a thousand times. Unfortunately, the trains I experienced were not nearly this pristine.

The subways experienced a graffiti epidemic that started slowly in the late 1960s but came to a head in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Exactly when I was using the trains the most—I graduated from high school in 1982. It was emblematic of the troubled times in NYC. The 1971 New York Times profile of TAKI 183 is often credited with helping accelerate New York’s emerging graffiti movement.

Occasionally, a train would be covered entirely in spray paint, both inside and out. Some people consider this “art.” I don’t, and I hate it even to this day.

Eventually, the Transit Authority got control of the problem, and the World’s Fair cars went through several different paint schemes before ultimately becoming the rust-red trains known as Redbirds. But for me, none had the uniqueness, optimism, and beauty of the original Bluebird design.

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