There are those who sip discreetly on subway trains, reaching for the paper bags in their coat pockets, or pull flasks from their knapsacks in the darkened back corners of a city bus.

Such is the stigma of drinking in transit, where the sloshed are supposed to have boarded that way.

But for decades, passengers on the Metro-North Railroad have found a workaround amid the fake wood panels and lounge-style seating of the bar car — the space where everybody may or may not know your name, but none would dare cast a judgmental glare about that fourth beer before the Stamford station.

“The two words you don’t want to hear on the bar car,” said Steve Schleier, clutching his beer can en route to Fairfield, Conn., on Thursday evening. “Last call.”

And yet, for the final commuter rail bar cars believed to be operating in the United States, it is indeed the end of the line. The last of Metro-North’s old car fleet, introduced in the 1970s, has aged out of the system; the 7:34 p.m. train on Friday from Grand Central Terminal to New Haven was the bar car’s final ride before its retirement at the hands of a new, barless model.