It’s a clever marketing synch: the MTA, which has had its history of collusion with corrupt politicians and historic subway trains running  old stock to promote a TV show about a crooked politician.

 HBO is paying the Metropolitan Transit Agency  more than $150,000, according to a spokesman, to run a Prohibition-era train along the 2/3 line in Manhattan during four September weekends. It’s a promotion for the second season of “Boardwalk Empire“, a drama set in 1920s Atlantic City.

The MTA says running the vintage train was their idea. HBO came to them looking for “something nostalgic,” said Eugene Ribeiro, the transit agency’s director of promotions. So the MTA offered one of its retired trains, an old IRT train that ran from 1917 to the 1960s. A few of the historic trains sit around in yards and at the Transit Museum in Brooklyn (where Boardwalk Empire is filmed).

The subway will run between 42nd Street and 96th streets, making express stops in between. Its interiors will be adorned with images of Nucky Thompson, the corrupt political boss at the center of Boardwalk Empire who stays in power by dispensing both fear and favors.

People paid by HBO will walk around Manhattan later this month giving out free MetroCards courtesy of Nucky.