Fascinating photos show how old NYC subway cars are reborn on the sea floor

You might think that the last stop for old <a href="http://inhabitat.com/nyc/artist-london-kaye-turns-the-l-train-into-a-yarnbombed-wonderland-for-valentines-day/" target="_blank">NYC subway cars</a> is deep in Brooklyn or at the edge of the Bronx, but the truth is actually much more interesting. Photographer <a href="http://www.stephenmallon.com" target="_blank">Stephen Mallon</a> has spent the last three years tracking decommissioned cars as they are sent to their watery graves at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. But the story doesn't just end there -- the train carcasses find a new life on the sea floor as <a href="http://inhabitat.com/will-floridas-new-artificial-reef-bring-economic-prosperity-or-ecological-destruction/" target="_blank">artificial reefs</a>, helping to bolster marine life along the East Coast.

For ten years, New York City subway cars have been helping the environment, not just by offering up green transportation, but by helping to <a href="http://inhabitat.com/eternal-reefs-can-turn-your-remains-into-a-sustainable-habitat-for-marine-life/" target="_blank">rebuild fragile eco-systems</a> on the seabed along the coast.

After a life of transporting New Yorkers from Coney Island to Inwood and back, the MTA’s subway cars are sent to their new homes, which can be anywhere from coastal Delaware to South Carolina.

Mallon photographs follow this journey in a series he appropriately calls “Next Stop, Atlantic."

The <a href="http://inhabitat.com/village-underground-subway-cars-studio-space/" target="_blank">abandoned cars</a> are first stacked in their own junkyard, lined up side by side instead of end to end. With doors and partitions removed, Mallon’s photographs look right into the guts of the old trains, rendering them like skeletons rather than old vehicles.

Mallon’s series shows the stacks of trains out to sea on massive barges before they reach their destination.

As the subway cars are cast into the ocean, Mallon captures their almost poetic descent, before they settle to the bottom of the ocean to become an <a href="http://inhabitat.com/worlds-longest-artificial-reef-under-construction-in-mexico/" target="_blank">eternal home for fish, algae, coral and other plants</a>.