Subway double take: Was that the Train to the Plane?

The JFK Express whisked straphangers from midtown Manhattan to Kennedy Airport on a premium ticket. New Yorkers of a certain age remember the service not so much for its utility as for the jingle that promoted it after it entered service in 1978 -- "Take the Train to the Plane."

What we share with you here is a rolling relic of sorts. This work train, spotted Monday night at the 14th Street/Eighth Avenue station, displays iconography for the Train to the Plane, which made its last run in 1990. There's a few such JFK Express holdovers that haunt the tunnels, but this is the first of these elusive beasts we were able to photograph. Keep an eye out for them, and some of the last surviving examples of the No. 7 train Redbirds, which still make the work-train rounds, advertisements from 2003 still in place.

OK, now for the piece de resistance. A link to the Train to the Plane commercial. Sing along now! Can't they repurpose this jingle for the AirTrain? We can dream.