The R27 was a New York City Subway car built by the St. Louis Car Company for the New York City Transit Authority in 1960 and 1961. The R27s were a continuation of the R16 style, except for the use of IRT R26 style pink hard fiberglass all longitudinal seating instead of the mixed combination seating found on the older R16s.
The cars were "Protestant" married pairs, which means that they were coupled together as pairs. Their initial assignment was on the Brighton QT & QB lines on November 6, 1960, where they ushered in letter markings on the BMT. These cars along with their identical R30 and R30A sister cars replaced the oldest BMT Standards including all 50 of the trailer cars, the ME-1s that came from the SIRT, MS Multi-section cars, and the IRT Lo-Vs that were modified to be used on shuttles on the BMT division.
An omen of the future was seen on the route signs on these cars when they were delivered: The numerical route designations formerly used on the BMT were not used; the letter designations for routes were continued where the IND designations ended. The IND routes either then or previously in use ran from A thru HH; the BMT designations were now to begin with J and run thru TT. After the merger in late 1967 many IND and BMT routes were joined.
Eventually, once they had arrived in sufficient numbers, they provided all weekend service on the BMT Southern Division. The R27s were primarily BMT Eastern Division cars after November 1967, although they would appear in the northern and southern divisions as well as on IND routes.
In the 1980s, 24 selected GE R27s were painted in the fox red paint scheme similar to the 162 GE R30s and were kept in the Clean Car Program. Retirement of the R27s started with the arrival of the R68 and R68As from 1986-1989 and was completed by 1990. Afterwards, 8145, the only R27 that was not scrapped, was used as part of the School Car Service program in Pitkin Yard. When the program ended in 2011, the car was donated to the New York Transit Museum.
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