The Point Behind Pointing
Why do train operators in certain cities point out from their booths?
Hello, and happy 2026! Hope everyone had a good holiday season.
Now then: The photo above shows a New York City subway conductor whose train has just pulled into a station in Brooklyn. As you can see, he’s pointing.
That might seem like a random gesture that I just happened to capture, but there’s more to it than that. If you watch closely, you’ll see that New York subway conductors always point before opening the train doors when a train arrives at a station. Sometimes they point straight across, like the conductor shown above, and sometimes they point upward, like the conductor in this next photo:
Once you become aware of this protocol, it’s easy to become fixated on it. I was recently excited to witness a moment when two trains were arriving at a station in Manhattan — one on the express track and one on the local track — and I managed to catch both of the conductors pointing in this short video clip:
What are all these conductors are pointing at, and why? Let’s take another look at the two conductors from that video, and look at the areas that I’ve highlighted here: