‘New York weirdness’: why did a mysterious bell ring in a subway station for weeks?

The 50th Street subway station. Photograph: The Guardian

For nearly two weeks, an alarm rang loudly and continuously inside a New York subway station.

As the New York Post first reported, the “mysterious bell” knelled through the stairway to a downtown 1 train platform at 50th Street in midtown Manhattan, a few blocks north of Times Square. Neither commuters nor workers at businesses located inside the station could identify the source of the incessant ringing.