There was no reason the J train should have been where it was in Broad Street Station, the last stop on the line, at the very bottom of Manhattan. The cars were all empty, there was no conductor and it should have been parked on a storage track.
But somehow it had rolled along the tracks, tripping an emergency switch that snarled lines all across Manhattan on a Saturday afternoon last month. A train had seemingly moved by itself.
A transit worker dropped onto the tracks to investigate the wayward J train. Inside, he found its cabins unlocked, doors swinging ajar. Suddenly, the train started moving again. He quickly pulled the emergency brake.
There was another detail from that afternoon that struck the worker: On the platform at Broad Street was a throng of maybe 20 teenagers avidly filming the orphaned train.
The J train, it seemed, had been “conquested.”
Conquesting — the preferred term among the mostly teenage groups that run amok in the city’s subway system — grew out of an unlikely union of two subcultures: train geeks and urban explorers, all of whom chronicle their escapades on TikTok, Instagram and encrypted Discord chats. In practical terms, it amounts to breaking into the conductor’s cab of a subway car, messing with the controls, honking the horn and filming the moment.
And increasingly, conquestors might take the train for a joyride.
Last year, 23 incidents where a train was moved without authorization were reported to the New York Police Department, up from just two incidents in 2023 when the department began tracking the phenomenon. In just the first three months of this year there have already been a dozen.
What started as a fascination with the technical minutia of the subway system has evolved into something far more alarming, driven above all by one fact: how simple it is to commandeer a New York City subway train.
“All it takes is a skeleton key,” said Gael, an 18-year-old from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who said he started conquesting when he was 15. Like his peers, he spoke under the condition of anonymity, only using his middle name, because he was describing illegal activities. “You can buy them on Amazon.”
In Search of the Vapor Key
Available online for between $2 to $10, a skeleton key, once artfully modified, will unlock nearly every cabin door in a New York City subway car. Once inside, conquestors film themselves futzing with the control panels or grabbing the mic to make announcements. Another two universal keys turn all of the trains on.
J., a 19-year-old conquestor in Brooklyn, monetized his obsession, making keys in his bedroom to sell. Using a rasp, J., who agreed to be identified by the initial of his first name, shaved down generic skeleton keys he would buy in bulk for a few dollars online until they fit M.T.A. door locks, then sold them at $10 a pop. On a private Instagram chat that The New York Times viewed, one user asked $300 for a set of prized “officials” — transit keys issued by the M.T.A. itself — including a master key, known as a vapor key, which operates passenger doors, among other things. Another user offered to make keys for others on his school’s 3-D printer.
In New York City, it is against the law for unauthorized people to possess official subway keys, and even having a skeleton key can lead to charges like possession of a burglar’s tools, a class A misdemeanor that can entail up to a year in prison. The Police Department monitors auction sites like eBay for sales of official keys, and it reports such illegal listings to the site.
J. still can’t believe how easy it is for him and his friends to obtain the keys that let them take over a subway car. “It’s crazy,” he said in an interview last year. “I don’t trust the M.T.A. if I can buy a $2 key on Amazon and open the cab doors.”
Honor Among Train Thieves
A surge of recent conquests that have spilled into the mainstream have caused a schism among the various tribes who seek free rein of the New York City subway system.
J. is probably best described as an urban explorer, or “urbexer,” interested in using his keys to gain access to not only subway cars, but also underground utility rooms, where he can lift M.T.A. uniforms like reflective vests, which he wears to blend in among transit workers when sneaking down onto the tracks. He considers himself a cautious practitioner who observes unspoken rules about subway exploration.
Then there are railfans, who might be called the original subway devotees. Sometimes they’re called “foamers,” as in those who foam at the mouth with excitement at any passing train, the type of people who can identify an approaching R211 car from a R268 by the way it rattles down the tunnel. As for conquestors, they are train nerds trying to make their fantasy of being a subway conductor fleetingly real, consequences be damned. Acting on this dream dates back to at least the 1990s, when a 16-year-old train enthusiast, Keron Thomas, successfully drove an A train from 207th Street in Manhattan to Lefferts Boulevard in Queens and almost all the way back.
“A lot of people are inspired to be train drivers in the future,” said B., a 19-year-old who lives in Corona, Queens, and who asked that only the first initial of his middle name be used. B. began conquesting when he was 15 and living with his parents in Brooklyn. For railfans like B., getting inside a parked train’s cab and having access to the driver’s console is the only way to satisfy their curiosity until they’re old enough to work for the M.T.A. Once inside the booth, they might try to switch the train’s route programming from say, a Q to a J train. “Yes, it is illegal what you are doing,” B. said. “But the only reason is because there is a very big interest in these trains.”
Railfans often seek souvenirs; so many of the lettered train signs have been stolen from certain lines recently that the M.T.A.’s print shop temporarily resorted to paper versions. They also collect more intangible things. When Gael breaks into a booth, he cycles through buttons to play various recorded messages. The prize is finding a “rare” announcement — This A train will terminate at World Trade Center, for instance — and recording it on his phone.
Gael, like other railfans interviewed, routinely minimized the fact that conquestors are engaging in criminal behavior with potentially grave consequences. “It is a crime, but we’re not here to hurt anybody,” he said. “We just like to have fun.”
Railfans, however, are generally not adrenaline junkies; few consider subway surfers part of their community. Those are the daredevils driven by viral social-media glory to risk their lives — and often lose them — to stand atop hurtling subway cars. J., who says he climbed atop a moving train once before he decided it was not worth the extreme risk, thinks surfers are “crazy.” He will still sell them his subway keys, but he said he assumes no responsibility for his customers’ safety.
“Everything is already telling them not to surf, and they clearly are not listening,” he said. “I’m just selling them keys.”
But even among the community, conquesting’s growing popularity has begun to cause divisions that play out in person and in secret group chats on encrypted online forums like Discord. There are lines some refuse to cross. A railfan like B. is dead set against actually moving trains that he and his cohort break into without compunction. Such an escalation, he believes, endangers the entire hobby.
Last year, a 15-year-old boy was arrested after he set off a metal detector at the Alfred E. Smith Technical High School in the Bronx, where he was a student. Inside his bag were train keys, transit radios, a safety vest and a stolen M.T.A. identification card, according to the police. He had already been caught moving an R train in Brooklyn and trying to break into the conductor’s cab on a 2 train in the Bronx.
“There is a big responsibility to having these keys,” B. said.“These kids don’t have any sense of responsibility.”
Mostly, B. feared that such an egregious act as stealing a train would make someone stop them all for good.
‘Man, I Took a Risk’
Clips of such instances abound on the internet — including one that appears to show someone turning on an R train with a paper clip — even as social media companies have said that they have taken steps to block these clips.
“Unauthorized train movements generally don’t make it far, and there have been no reported injuries,” Demetrius Crichlow, the president of New York City Transit, said in an emailed statement. “But let’s be clear: It’s dangerous and totally unacceptable.”
In response to the rise in break-ins, the M.T.A. has retrofitted more than 200 subway cars with cameras and installed more than 350 new door locks, according to the authority. It is rolling out a new safety device that acts like a tripwire to prevent unauthorized train movements.
Currently, most trains do not have security cameras in the cab; since 2023, all new subway cars now feature them, plus eight cameras in the passenger area. The M.T.A. said it had also started working with manufacturers to develop biometric controls that would prevent anyone unauthorized from moving a train, but a spokesman declined to say if any had yet been installed.
The authority would not provide a timeline for the full rollout of new locks or cameras, or a cost for any of these measures.
Kim McLaurin, a maintenance train operator, works at the 207th Street rail yard in Upper Manhattan, and lately, the prospect of walking at dusk among the parked subway cars fills her with dread. She recently arrived for her night shift to find that one of the trains had been moved; security footage captured what appeared to be teenagers carousing inside the train maintenance shop, or barn, she said. Ms. McLaurin, 42, fears the vandals will hurt themselves, or that a rail yard worker like her will be crushed in the dark by conquestors taking a train for a spin.
“Most people don’t understand how massive these trains are, and if they don’t know what they are doing they could possibly get electrocuted,” she said. “It would be very devastating to hear that one of us didn’t make it home because our security is lacking.”
John Chiarello, the president of the Transportation Workers Union Local 100, which represents the M.T.A.’s workers, said there was yet another risk: Every joyride, he said, reveals an enormous security loophole into one of the largest subway systems in the world.
“If kids could do it,” Mr. Chiarello said in an interview, “what could a determined terrorist in these times do?”
Even some of the conquestors are rethinking their passion. Just before his birthday this past year, Gael broke into a subway storage track along the A line, but on his way out, he threw away his skeleton keys, he said. He was about to turn 18, and afraid of the consequences he might face as an adult; an arrest on his record might end his dream of working for the M.T.A.
“When I look back at it, I was just a kid just messing around,” he said. “Deep down I knew it was dangerous, and I’m like, Man, I took a risk.”
Sarah Maslin Nir is a Times reporter covering anything and everything New York … and sometimes beyond.
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