I’ve expressed my surprised there aren’t more stories set along the underground rails, and now I learn of one based on the eight fortified trains that were painted yellow like other MTA service trains as a disguise. The so-called money trains regularly picked up millions of dollars of toll fares in the wee hours every night in New York City.

Their existence was a well-kept secret that finally surfaced in a 1995 flick starring Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson, and a young Jennifer Lopez. If only the movie had lived up to its promise. The film, though, was a bomb, snarled in Hollywood clichés and comical misteps. Maybe they should have played it as comedy rather than criminal action.

Meanwhile, the trains themselves have become history, in part due to the MTA’s switch to from cash and tokens to MetroCards issued at vending machines, typically using credit cards.

Well, it’s one more element that could have gone into my novel Subway Visions, maybe as a somewhat friendlier bank-on-wheels, back before we had ATM machines everywhere.

Can we really keep up with all this change, everywhere we turn?