September 27, 2012 • 43 mins
As ubiquitous as they've become, it's easy to overlook the marvels of engineering that are subways. Chuck and Josh go boring as they explore these systems of tubes that must circumnavigate rock, rivers, cables and more to get you where you're going.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should Know from House stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bright. Uh, just sitting there normally right, Yeah,
I'm not doing anything unusual. I think we should have
(00:23):
started this with taking the A Train. I think we
should have changed up our music. Well, let's do that. Okay,
how about this? All right? Howe? How we are we
train to find the quickest way to get um? We
(00:45):
did okay, thanks thanks to the magic of post production,
we did and said that was taking the A Train.
Who made that song? Boy, I don't know who originally
composed it, to be honest, Well, I think I think
we should find out. Well who who just performed it? Well,
there's many versions. Well what's the one you selected, like
a week from now? Uh, I don't know. Did they
(01:11):
do a train? Now it's a jazz tune? Oh? John Coltrane?
Did he do it? Let's go with Coltrane? Man, maybe
I should just do it and that that that then? Oh?
Is that that song? Yeah? Thinking the A Train? That's
a good song. Is it instrumental? Because you know a
lot of those instrumentals actually have lyrics. What the old
jazz tunes. Yeah. Really they in the train. That's it
(01:36):
that You're right? Okay, let's go with Duke Ellington's version.
Duke Ellington did the a train at the beginning of
this episode. I hoped everyone liked it. The Duke. We
haven't heard it yet, that's right. Um So, Chuck, I
know that you know what the subway is because we've
been on the subway together. Yeah. Do you remember when
we were in New York. Um, I believe it was
(01:59):
for ABC Go, our first little opportunity there, and we
were going to meet you me yea, And I remember
I met you me Uh that was that where in
that bar? Afterwards? Well, I mean I worked with her,
but then I was like, that was the first time
you ever hung up? Yeah exactly. Um. So we were
we were going and that was my first time in
the New York subway, and I remember we were looking
(02:20):
at the subway and um, the the whole thing just
turned into like this series of confusing lines to me
and like suddenly I was blind and like holding your arm,
and like I had the mind of a child, and
not even like a really bright child either. It was
just kind of like what does it say, um, and
(02:40):
I can report after being back in New York with
you me several times that I do that to her still,
that we're enabling you was what's going on? I think
it is. I think if you guys had thrown me
in and be like you figure it out, figure it out,
I could have, but I don't have to. Um and uh.
It's kind of nice because it's really infusing. So when
(03:00):
you go to New York, you just kind of like
just go with Yumi's wind wherever she blows kind of
but the wind is coming from her heavy size that
she's the one who has to like read the subway. Yeah. Um.
But now that I've read this article how subways work,
I don't understand the New York subway system any more
(03:21):
than I did before I read this article. But I
can tell you that the rails are made of thirty
five ft long pieces of carbon steel that are five
and a half inches tall and one and a half
inches wide, And you could run any train, any train
on the world, in the world on those rails, not
in the world, but at least in New York, because
(03:42):
I guess there's different cages, but there the New York
subway system was designed so that you could just kind
of if you wanted to, like go to Cleveland on
a subway train, you could. Yeah, that's I was designed. Yeah,
they could put it on just a regular railway track,
then go to Cleveland and then you get to Cleveland. Ego, jeez,
(04:03):
I want to go back to New York. Cleveland's where
the first stoplight in the country was. Did you know that? Really?
I like Cleveland. I'm just kidding. That's where my home
away from home is now. Oh yeah, so it was.
Now they're an Acron, but yeah, it's a suburb of Cleveland.
I never realized that. And I'm from Ohio and I
didn't realize that it was a suburb. It's like half
(04:25):
hour or so. I always thought Acron was more towards Dayton. Yeah, alright,
so Dayton, let's talk about it all right, let's talk
about subways. The Metro and France. Five hundred forty seven
yards every five forty seven yards, you're gonna find a
subway station. Yeah, that's pretty good. No, no, not even there.
(04:49):
There's no building in Paris that's more than five botch
that one. No, but it really you helped build up
the drama okay, Um, the the Tube in London, mind
the gap everyone, Um, two hundred and seventy five stations,
and our dear beloved New York Subway system four hundred
sixty eight as of now, packed into like two hundred
(05:12):
and sixty square miles. Yeah, which is that's pretty impressive.
And that's why the New York subway system looks like
a play of spaghetti man. It's really tough to read.
It's not just me. It can't just be it's not.
You just have to zero in on your area and
then you're like, oh, just you gotta blur your eyes
and block out everything else. And then everyone behind you
was looking at you like tourists. Yeah, exactly what's got
(05:34):
his eyes crossed? And why? Why is does that guy
next to him look like Ronnie Millsap all of a
sudden because I saw him walk down here? Just fine.
The London Underground is the oldest, open in eighteen sixty three.
The Metro was next in hundred in New York not
far behind in nineteen o four. And Tracy, who wrote
a very thorough article this is a Tracy V. Wilson Joy. Yeah,
(05:56):
you know it's gonna be good. Um. She points out
that this they all kind of happened within pretty dense
space of time. Because the Industrial Revolution people were out
in farming and and they're like, screw this, I need
a decent egg roll. Yeah, I'm gonna move into the
city where I can get a job in a factory.
Well yeah, and before that there weren't jobs and factories
(06:17):
because there weren't factories. Part of the Industrial Revolution was
the rise of factories. Everybody threw down their agrarian tools
like scites, forget this hole, I'm out of here, right right,
clever word play, thank you, um, and they moved to
the cities. And when they moved to the cities, all
of a sudden there was a lot of people who
(06:37):
needed to move about and they didn't have cars, partially
because cars hadn't been invented yet, that was one reason,
but also even beyond that, like not everybody could afford
a horse, but they still need to get someplace. So
it's a good point. City fathers in these areas Paris London,
London first, and then Um because I think it was
(06:59):
the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, and then and then
New York. Um said all right, we need to figure
out how to move a bunch of these people at once,
and what they came up with was mass transit, but
it was all above ground mass transit, and it involved horses.
Remember the Wing Cries Typhoid Merry episode. One horse produces
(07:19):
twenty pounds of poop per day, and New York had
like a hundred thousand horses or something like that walking around. Yeah,
you know how much poopa subway train produces zero. Yeah,
there's probably a couple of guys pooping on the trains,
but attribute that to the guy on the train. That's
not really the subway. That's true. It is not exhaust
as you as you would call horses spoop um, they
(07:42):
wouldn't call it, So you're right. They had horse drawn
carriages and these cool things called omnibusses, which were longer
horse drawn carriages. Now they're known by their slang term bus.
Oh yeah, that's what that's what a bus is. I'm
glad you brought that up. People in New York. Worst
in New York. If you're in New York, you got
it all figured out. But tourist in New York, I
(08:05):
would recommend that you occasionally take a bus trip. Don't
be afraid of the bus, like a regular bus or
a tourist bus, a double dunker bus. Don't take those, No,
a regular bus, you're you're a little metro card. You
might even know this if you've just been in New
York like once. It works on the buses so as
well as the subways. And a lot of times if
you're like uptown at the park, you're like, man, I
(08:27):
can't find a subway stop near me. I need to
get downtown. Just walk to the edge and chances are
you going to see a bus with its own little lane.
It's just going south and you get a nice views
of everything you're out out and about above ground. And
that's just my advice of tourist. Don't be afraid of
the busses in New York. It could be a great
way to get around. There's also cabs, you know. Yeah,
(08:48):
but you know those are expensive, man. Yeah yeah, I
mean not on Discovery channels. But when I'm there on
my own dime, I take a lot of buses and
subway yeah sure, and it's subway yeah yeah, But I
didn't realize you took the bus. Yeah, buses are great.
I had no idea. So you take the bus and
(09:09):
you know where your local elector lives. That's right, that's
pretty impressive, chuck. So what happened with these buses though?
And with all the horsepoop? As they said, this is
getting out of hand. Um, we need to go underground
because there's no more room up here. Yeah. We we'd
love to build trains, but we can't because there's too
many people, so too many bagel shops. So London did
(09:31):
it first, right, eighteen sixty three is when it opened. Yeah,
god knows when they started construction. Look at someone knows
God besides God. Um, and uh, then within forty years,
I guess Paris open. There's because it was such a
huge success. And I mean it was just brilliant. The
(09:51):
problem is it was also like planning wise, it was
a brilliant move, but um, construction wise, it makes almost
no sense whatsoever. It's like, Hey, where's the hardest place
we can put this mass transit system. I've got it. Yeah,
through a river like under bedrock, um, and basically through
(10:13):
every obstacle that we can create that we've already created. Yeah,
that's a good point. Talk about this. These days, they
have this really cool machine called the tunnel boring machine. Yeah,
did you see these? Yeah, it looks awesome. It's basically
like a tremor worm, Yeah, but a mechanized one that
won't turn on you. Um and I hope people caught
(10:35):
that little reference. Which one. So this TVM tunnel boring
machine um has disc and scrapers, crushes rock into into
pebbles and sand. It has like a conveyor belt that
comes out the back, so it is kind of likeating
and then dudes get rid of that stuff. And uh,
it actually supports the tunnel as it digs and does
(10:57):
a really really great job. But um, we all love
the TV. They're fairly new though. They didn't have these
back in the day. Um So back in the day
they had to do it by hand and picks, shovels,
dynamite yeah or TNT, depending on where your preferences lie. Um. Yeah.
(11:17):
So this was kind of a problem in that you
didn't have a conveyor belt. You had to use pick.
You frequently ran into rock and sometimes you had to
dig into the bedrock, which you know, bedrock that's just
like that's the actual Earth's surface. Everything else like yeah,
mudd and dirt that's just like runoff. Did you realize that. Yeah,
I just recently realized that I've done that for years.
(11:40):
But that bedrock it's kind of tough to get through. Yeah,
New York City alone, UM had eight thousand laborers to
work on this project, about sixty of which died. And
I don't even know if they have account on the
injury sustained. I'm sure it was like sixty a day injured.
Do you think I don't know thousands of injuries? Let's
(12:01):
just say that, UM, did you look up the New
Austrian tunneling method? I did. I want to know about this.
I didn't have a chance to. I don't. I can't
tell you. Please tell me it is. It had like
eight different tenants, so it's not so much a method
of digging as it is a, as Tracy points out,
a collection of techniques for digging and finding out where
(12:23):
to dig. Yeah, where to dig and how to dig? Um?
So like, what are they like? No? No, they're not
random like that. But you know, we should do an
article on tunneling period because it's pretty amazing. And the
reason they called it the New Austrian method was to
distinguish it from the old Austrian methods. I guess that
(12:45):
they must be the king tunnel ers like Charles Bunsen.
Is he Austrian? Uh no, but he was the tunneler
in Great Escape? But didn't he was the tunnel expert. Um,
so that that's that from Reservoir Dogs. That was a
line at one point someone says, he's like Charles Bronson
in Great Escape he was digging tunnels. How did they
(13:09):
miss that line? I don't know. Well, so you just
referenced the reference of a movie. The method that they
use for a long time, um was the cut and
cover method, which this is crazy. They like literally rip
up a street, put a subway there, and then build
the street back on top. It makes uttering complete sense
(13:30):
for a couple of routes. Number one, subways are meant
to serve like areas streets, right, It's basically like a
street that happens to be underground that moves a bunch
of people at once. Yeah. Okay, so following a street
makes a lot of sense, especially if you're a planner. Um.
The problem is you are completely ripping up a street
(13:50):
temporarily because you're what you're doing is you're digging a
trench and then rebuilding the earth above it. But the
good thing is is you can rebuild of the earth
above it even stronger. It's like Steve Austin or something
like that, right, Yeah, Like you dig a trench as
far down as you want your subway to be, and
you put in pilings, you drive them down, preferably into
(14:13):
bedrock if you can, and then you put like tresses
and beams over those nice buttress every now and then. Yeah,
and then you can rebuild the ground in the road
up above it. You can also reroute any um sewer lines,
any power lines, any anything through these tresses and being frankly,
I'm a cut and cover method guy. Yeah, Well, it
(14:35):
also makes sense because the streets are probably not gonna
You're probably not gonna run into as many obstacles, Um,
like a basement of a major building. Yeah, exactly, because
there wouldn't be a major building in the middle of
the street. There was a cool part in The Devil
in the White City. Did you ever read that man
that's on the list? You like it a lot um
where they're talking about how Chicago built the first skyscrapers.
(15:00):
Oh yeah, yeah, and um, basically they figured out how
to float the foundations of the building above the bedrock,
because the bedrock was really far down and there was
like the sandy shifting soil. I can't remember it specifically,
but it's like, Wow, I'm I'm riveted by this description
of an architectural technique, a building technique that they figured
(15:22):
out so you didn't even need the murders. I found
them superfluous. Really, it was a good book, and I'm
not one for like popular fiction like that is popular
semi fiction, historical fiction. Yeah, it's good. I like it. Um,
So we're talking about obstacles, and that is a big
(15:43):
problem when you're when you're digging tunnels, especially under a
city that's already has an infrastructure in place. Um, you're
going to run into things that you can move. Sometimes,
you're gonna run into things that you can't move sometimes
that you have to move around. So, like you ever
in in a subway, especially New York that really slows
(16:03):
down and takes one of those hard turns, It maybe
because you know that's the direction you need to start
going now, but more than likely it's because they had
to reroute it, especially if it's an old section of
the subway. Yeah, very true, because now you can just
put the TVM on that thing, and it's like, whatever
you need, guys, all go get it. Well, yeah, but
(16:24):
I'm talking more along the lines of man made obstructions
like gas lines, thematic lines. But with with those like
water lines are probably very tough, but all of those
can be rerouted. You can basically reroute the line rather
than reroute the subway line. It probably depends on which
one is more cost effective, is what they go with.
You know. Um you can also, like I said, if
(16:45):
you're doing a cut and cover method, you can, Um,
you can basically hang those same lines from these You
can use the beams and tresses as support for those
same lines. It's that makes sense. Uh. Sometimes, as Tracy
(17:27):
pointed out, you see lines that aren't on any blueprints.
You're like, wait a minute, what's this big pipe doing here?
It doesn't show up on any registry that we have
for the city. Uh, we gotta find out what this
is to see if we can move it. Yeah. Maybe
it's old and unused and you can throw it away.
That'd be great. Maybe it's full of dangerous gases which
(17:49):
is not great, or full of water, or maybe you
hit an aquifer. Yeah, water is a big one. Yeah,
if you hit an aquifer, well you know what that is.
That's just a bunch of water pooled on top of
the bedrock, which is really the surface of the earth. Um.
You you can hit an aquifer, you might have to
say across the river, like the East River. Um. And
(18:10):
when you do that, you have to generally tunnel under it,
which is extremely dangerous because then not only you don't
just have a street that can collapse on top of you,
you have a river that can collapse on top of you.
And rivers tend to weigh more than streets. Yeah, and
you can drown and a river you can't drown in
a street, right, that's it's full of water. UM. I
thought this was pretty clever. How they how was it
(18:32):
Paris in the sin before We're drowning? So they basically
put down like pods and then sent compressed air into
the pod and blew all the water out. And then
men went into these pods and worked. And they use
the same thing or a similar technique in um building
the Brooklyn Bridge pylons. But the problem was like people
(18:55):
would come up and get the bends from working beneath
the water surface, but in a dry like area, compressed
air because they were down so far and they just
come up without thinking about it and get the bends. Well,
the good news is if you're working under the water
like that, you're probably gonna get a little pay bump,
like hazard pay as they call it. UM. And the
(19:16):
other cool thing they did in Paris too, was they
they found that um, some of this mud and like
wet dirt, which is mine, was too hard to deal with,
so they froze it with calcium chloride and all of
a sudden they removed it like it was a big
chunk of clay. Yeah, pretty neat. It was very clever.
And that was old timing construction too. I was that
(19:38):
back in the day, I believe, so I didn't realize
that they were that clever back then. It's pretty smart. Um.
You can also basically use the cut and cover method
in Uh your pick on that, and I love that.
I'm gonna make you a T shirt. This is cut
and cover, but I wouldn't wear that. It just makes
sense to me, Yeah, it does. Um. You can use
(19:59):
the cut and cover method across the river. That's what
they did in the San Francisco Bay. Um. They basically
just cut the tunnel they wanted and prefabricated the um
sections of the subway tunnel and put it in the
trench and then just cover it back up and I
guess like waiting for the water to leak out. Over
(20:20):
the course of several decades UM. In the very old
cities like Paris, they have also uncovered some pretty interesting things.
Um like catacombs full of human bones. Yeah, there's a
whole documentary on that. Cannonballs, quarries, very deep quarries. This
is kind of cool. I thought this was very cool.
(20:42):
Some of the quarries in Paris were so deep that
they had to actually build bridges, underground bridges for the
subway to get across. It's an elevated train underground. Yeah,
and nuts across ancient Roman quarries. Man, I mean that's crazy. Yeah. Um,
there's a lot of cool stuff like that, um like
(21:02):
abandoned subway stations if you're into that kind of thing,
and I know a lot of people who listen to
us are. There's a website called um NYC subway dot
org and they have like little reports on like stations
when they were built, when they were decommissioned, why photos
taken of them after they were abandoned. And there's actually
(21:23):
a little trick, chuck um where if you were on
the six train and now you're talking about do you
I think so the City Hall stop. Yeah. So if
you're on the six train and you're headed towards the
Brooklyn Bridge stop and you stay on right, the train
will actually go around a loop to turn around and
go the other way. That loop goes through an old
(21:46):
abandoned um Metro stop or mt A stop, And um,
it's this incredible stained glass architecture, like preserved turn of
the century subway station that's just like frozen in time.
It was in operation from like nineteen o four, and
they used to make everybody get off at Brooklyn Bridge,
(22:07):
but now they'll let people stay on. And do they
Because I couldn't find recent information, I saw an article
today that said they did that for a while, another
or not, and then I saw another one that said
no you can. Um. I wonder if it's just arbitrary,
like depending on who's I know that they cleaned it
up in two thousand four and made it like kind
of I don't think they like put tons of money
(22:27):
towards restoration, but they cleaned it up really nice and
allowed like light to come through the stained glass, and
for a little while they let people stop and get
off and kind of tour it. But I know they
shut that down, Yeah, because the whole reason, well one
of the big reasons they showed it done because there's
such a tight curve that the um, the modern subway
cars can't sit flush up against the platform, so there's
(22:48):
a pretty big gap that people would have to jump
over to get off. So I can imagine you can't
get off. But from what I saw it was a
two thousand article it said you can stay on. Now. Well,
I've been meaning to check that out and going in November,
I'll check it out. Yeah, dude, let me know, report back.
I will report back. Okay. Um, So, rolling stock or
(23:08):
what these trains are actually called. And in some cities
the rolling stock is automated, like Denmark. The one they're
building now doesn't have drivers, which is kind of neat.
They have like you know, laser beams and uh and
all these crazy surveillance systems to drive the train. The
(23:29):
computerized what no what they do? And um, they navigate it.
They use break heat to generate power. They will even
let you know, someone stuck in the door. Um, yeah,
we'll open the door back up and did not drive away,
not drive away while someone stuck. And New York they're
actually trying out some of these now too. Actually yeah,
(23:53):
I didn't see when this article was written, but they
were the Tracy made mention of the um the the
addition that's being made to Long Island. Is this going
on still and like just this revamping that's going on constant, Well,
the revamping I think it was a seventeen billion dollar
bid in ninety four and there adding new lines or
(24:15):
trying to spruce up the trains and like you know,
replace the old cars. They're improving the air circulation, which
she points out like just because it's open up top
and a little bit of air can get in, doesn't
mean you don't have to have like a massive air
circulation system. And if you've ever been like deep within
the bowels of the subway system, then you might be
(24:36):
wondering if it's working properly, But it is, or you'd
be dead. Yeah, you'd die. Yeah, Yeah, they're the It
takes a tremendous amount of air to be recirculated to
allow humans to live underground. I think she said something
was it? Ye, six thousand cubic feet of fresh air
per minute is what is what they're shooting for. I
don't think it's there now, but that's their goal. Should
(25:00):
we talk about some of the signals, yeah, train signals. Yeah. So, um,
before a long long time ago, when a driver reached
a stoplight and had to come to a stop, they
had to put a key in and turn it to
reset the stoplight and be able to drive. And there's
a term called keying by that they still use. So
(25:21):
they do still use it. Now it's much more automated, um,
but there's there's still a set of signals where it's
like stop, proceed with caution, green light, you know, just
go as fast as you can. They do a speed limits. Yeah,
of course. Yeah, they're posted too, aren't they. Uh yeah,
I mean the driver can see them at least imagine
(25:44):
if you were looking and you're up front, you could
probably see him and to have the driver around the
shoulder and be like, we're going way faster than the Yeah.
I mean Martha here in Atlanta, which is sort of
a subway, you can um, I mean you can ride
it right up front by the the person and I've
done this many times and just kind of spide in
on how you drive the Marta train, and every time
I look, I'm like, I could totally drive this thing
(26:04):
right now. Oh yeah, yeah, dude. It's just like it's
got a little forward lever and a neutral and a
reverse and a break and then that's pretty much it. Yeah,
I could do it right now. You can drive it
through arms Crost right mark. Have you seen it's been
going around Facebook, the Marta map compared to the rest
of the world's Facebook. Oh, it's like New York, London, Paris,
(26:27):
and they all look like a play a spaghetti And
then it's Atlanta with its little plus sign plus sign
it's got two branches. But I will argue that, I mean,
it does suck in a way. But I will argue
that Atlanta didn't build it subway in eighteen sixty three.
They built it in like nineteen seventies something, and but yeah,
it stopped. Okay, I was gonna say, this isn't a
(26:48):
work in progress. No, they've added some stuff since. Yeah,
a little bit, but really it's pretty bad. It does
suck in every way. I mean, it's it's great if
it goes from the one place you need to go
to the other place you need to go. Sure, and
chances are that's not the case, and it sometimes it does, though,
especially if you live near a rail line. But even still,
you make one big l Yeah, I mean it's great
(27:11):
for me. I'm like Falcons game day, you know, right
down the street, Hop on there my brown bag, Hop off.
I'm right at the stadium. Yeah, it's nice your brown bag, so,
you know, for hyperventilation, right in case something bad goes down,
in case the six hundred thousand cubic leaders of error
isn't moved through now most of Atlanta is above ground subway. Really,
(27:34):
that's what I'm saying. It sucks in every way. Uh.
These things run on electricity these days, not like the
old steam train days. Yeah. I don't even know that
that was worth mentioning. Well, I think so because you
have the third rail that everyone knows is very dangerous. Yeah,
six volts in New York and you have a hundred
and twenty coming into your house. Really yeah, oh wow,
(27:55):
So it'll get you. It'll fry rap like they're not kidding. Uh. Uh.
Sometimes the third rail is between the two tracks. Sometimes
it's on the outside and then you generally have a
a brush or a shoe sliding shoe or a wheel
that connects to that and that supplies power to the train.
And um, they used to have its own power plant
(28:18):
to run the subway system in New York. I guess
these days they just mooch it from everyone. You know,
if you follow a chord in the subway, it's actually
going into somebody's living room. It's coming through the window.
(29:03):
All right, I think the fact of the podcast, I
will give it to you, but to me, it's the
geometry train. Yeah. I've seen these before, but um you have.
I've seen ones that were just there. It looks like
a little platform or something like that going by. Yeah, well,
or I dreamt one, uh yeah, this one in the
(29:25):
diagrams like full of computers and people. I haven't seen that.
But basically a geometry train, like if you have you know,
hundreds and thousands and millions of miles of subway track,
and some of it dates back a hundred years um
thanks to seismic activity, fire um weather peoples. Yes, all
(29:49):
this stuff is going to basically pull your checks out
of alignment. And tracks need to be fairly precise to
keep trains from like hopping off right so to um
to basically keep or find I should say, the rails
that are out of alignment. They have this thing called
the geometry train, which have your lasers that you're so
fond of, and uh, it basically just goes down the
(30:10):
track every track, and these things are running like twenty
four hours a day, seven days a week. Um. Yeah,
the one in New York runs at all times. Cool
and uh, and you would think it would have to.
I wonder how long it takes for a geometry train
to hit every track. Yeah. Man, that's a good question.
It's gotta take years. But anyway, it just rides along
and takes precise measurements of the alignment of the tracks,
(30:32):
and anything that's over one point to five inches out
of alignment, there's a report that's violed and says go
fix that track. And they also, just as an added bonus,
the geometry train finds hot spots using heat centers and
shoots them with fire extinguishers, Like if there's something flammable
in the other track, they could uh combust, whether it's
(30:53):
like a Derrito's bag, a cool ranch Derrito's bag, Uh,
any kind of Derrida goes back, Well, the dudes probably
already toast anyway, if he's on the third rail, he is,
And uh, that's a good reference for a spontaneous combustion podcasts.
In New York City and in many cities, the fair
does not cover the costs of running this massive system
(31:16):
about half yeah in New York. So um, if you're
complaining about the price of a subway New York, just
remember it could be double yeah if they were to
cover all the costs. So counter blessings new Yorkers. Yeah,
don't complain to me, and thank New York for big government.
Do you like the subway? Uh? Tracy points out that
(31:38):
the subways and at least the tunnels over the years
have been the site of refuge and terror. That was
a great setup, that's true though, Oh yeah it is. Um.
During World War one and two in London and Paris,
I believe people saw it cover against air raids. Um. Yeah,
(32:00):
in the subways. But world War One I was like,
that's when they were dropping bricks on each other, Like really,
that's how you would take down a plane. You fly
over another airplane and drop a brick and just go
right through a wing. And that was that for the plane. Yeah,
I thought they at least had the little tube like
the and it would shoot something like this somewhere mortar,
(32:21):
but that's ground based. That's those are mortars. Yeah, well yeah,
I guess you would still need to take refuge against
the mortar. Doesn't have to be a plane, and a
mortar comes through an air so yeah, air raid. Do
you want to get technical? But yes, World War two
for sure, during the blitz um of London. There are
a lot of people underground in the tube seeking help
(32:45):
and shelter. That's right, as are the mold people. Um,
if you haven't seen the documentary Dark Days Highly recommended,
is that about the mold people? Or this is like
the theres a. It's a group of homeless people. They
don't identify themselves as mold mold people as one of
those terms. You know, the people above ground made up,
uh somewhat sensational, But there are people living underground, some
(33:06):
I haven't been up in a long long time. In
this dude made the documentary. I think he actually went
underground and lived there for a couple of years to
do this. Yeah, yeah, so he wasn't like, you know,
I'll be down there for a few hours on Wednesday,
but then I have aybody lost appointment after that, so
I need to get back above ground. Um. And then
(33:26):
everyone remembers the Tokyo sarin gas episode killed twelve people.
Sure that was incredibly frightening. UM London, thousand five seven
seven it was July seven. Oh yeah, was that significant
or no? That's just how they referred to it, like
we referred to nine eleven is nine eleven interesting? And
(33:50):
then in our own nine eleven UM it destroyed subway
station and damaged some of the track. I think we
talked about that in the UM nine eleven memorial. I
think you're right. Didn't they preserve it somehow? Like they're
one of the trains is going to be in the museum.
I think so, because that rang a bell to me.
I'm gonna hit that up in November as well. Oh man,
(34:11):
I can't wait to go to that. It's gonna be
something else. UM. Originally you had tickets, then that became coins.
These days you might have an R F I D ticket. UM.
I think that was. I was in Switzerland. It was
like an honor system thing. Really. Yeah. I remember being
there and looking around like I don't see like where
(34:31):
you put the ticket in or anything. I think it's
just on our system. It was either Switzerland or Sweden.
I think of Switzerland, and I just remember thinking, these
people are crazy. So you just didn't pay a cent
just to teach them a lesson. Yeah, no, I paid
my fare, so chuck. Train car. If you are a
(34:51):
train car, how how many axles are you going to
go through? If you're in New York, if you're part
of their system in your lifetime, well, you're gonna live
about forty to fifty years. Um, you will go through
twenty four axles and twenty four motors over the span,
so that'll be two years. You're gonna get gussied up
(35:12):
a little. You're gonna get forty eight wheels over that time. Yeah,
not bad, not at once. And at the end of
your lifespan, they will dumpy in the ocean off the
coast of South Carolina. Have you seen pictures of that? Yeah? Yeah,
I found a whole little gallery. It's only like ten pictures.
But um on fast Code design um dot com they
have it's called surreal photos of subway cars being thrown
(35:36):
into the ocean. It is surreal it's really because you
look at that and you're like, no, how could you? Yeah,
and then oh, it's good for the environment somehow, right,
as long as they take the gas out first in
the oil. All right. So I got some more little
fun things. Uh. The overhaul and repair shop on Coney
Island is where it all goes down. Um. They have
(35:57):
over one three over five hundred thousand square feet of
shop space. We just counted that fast. Yeah, I just
you know, five thousands wasn't kind of each square foot? Um.
And this is where everything goes to get worked on
in New York. Everything they can even work on regular trains. Um.
(36:19):
They can store eighteen hundred subway cars there. And they
have a car wash that um subway car wash o business.
It cleans the exteriors of over one thousand cars once
a week and that's fifty thousand washes in a year.
(36:41):
It's a lot of washes. Then they just came out
with the new UM survey on the New York subway
system and the Q line was ranked the number one line.
Which where is that? I'm not sure? So Q runs
between Coney Island still all Avenue in Brooklyn and Astoria.
Did mize Boulevard and Queens m So in other words,
(37:02):
that's the one no one takes. So it's very clean.
It's very clean. And for the fourth year in a row,
the Sea train was ranked as the worst UM. It
failed an all four measures amount of scheduled service delaysed
caused by mechanical breakdowns, cleanliness, and announcements UM, whether or
not the announcements like or even something you can hear
(37:25):
makes sense, or whether it's just garbled mess. Get see
this is why I can't like, I can't do it
by myself. Yeah, well, you certainly don't get any help
most of the time from the the conductor. Yeah, driver,
Yeah we should we should know this. I would think conductor,
ticket taker, ticket taker. Uh. And then New York ranks
(37:48):
number seven and ridership in the world. Uh, Tokyo is first, Moscow, Beijing, Shanghai,
soul Ah Quangs. How where's that China is it? I
would imagine, Well, I mean that's a Chinese word. I
just haven't heard of that. Paris, Mexico City in Hong Kong,
(38:08):
London is not even in the top ten. And and
that's the number one UM. But you know why, because
World War two happened, and everybody got cars afterwards, and
a lot of subway lines just kind of fell into disrepair,
and like a whole generation was raised without really using subways. Yeah,
and black cabs are so roomy and private, but not
(38:30):
just in London, in UM the in the United States especially.
That's true. Yeah, because we talked about the l A
H and why the cars become the predominant form of
transportation um number of miles traveled by an average subway
car um in between repairs in New York that was
seven thousand, two thousand, eleven hundred and seventy two. But
(38:53):
I think that means they're taking better care of them,
not that they're just chirking the responsibilities New York in
two thousand eleven, all the subways combined traveled three hundred
forty two million miles, and in total, New York's four
hundred sixty eight stations are only sixty fewer than the
(39:13):
rest of the subway systems in the United States combined. Wow,
pretty cool. That's my favorite. And end to end they
always have these. If you laid the tracks end to
end New York cities would go from New York to Chicago.
That's it. I thought for sure something now just New
York to Chicago. Yeah, I'm a little disappointed in the
(39:35):
lowest station. If you've ever felt a little weird a
hundred ninety first Street in Manhattan, that's because you are
hundred and eighty feet below ground. That crazy probably shift.
It ran into a shift problem. The lady to go down.
You should tell people what that is. Well, it's very
hard rock. It's a metamorphic rocks. The flake rather than break,
(39:57):
so it's very hard to get through. That's my motto,
flake don't break. Right. We came up with like three
mottos and catchphrases in this one cut and cover, flake
don't break. And I guess don't take the C train?
Is that maybe? And the C train is like it's
insult to injury because I think the A, C and
E or like the blue line, and the A and
(40:18):
the E are doing pretty well, and the sea is
like the ugly step child. Where is it? Where? Oh,
it goes all over like you can get it down
in the West Village and then I believe it goes
north and then cuts over somewhere around Midtown, then goes
up the East side. I think it doesn't go into Brooklyn.
I don't think so, is it the L train? I
don't remember. You know more than I do. Man, I
(40:41):
just I miss the old and I guess they still
have some, but the old red like the seven train
I remember had those old red trains that look like trains.
They didn't look like subways. I don't they look like
regular locomotives to me. I like my subways to look
like subways. Trains should look like trains. Smells like poop gum.
Apparently in New York the gum is so bad and
(41:02):
some that you can lose your shoe. I can see
that you can actually get mired in the gum. Um.
Have you got anything else? Give up your seat for
the ladies. That's what I gotta say. That's a big one. Um. Yeah,
good going, Chuck. That's a fine ending. If you want
to learn more about subway etiquette and the tunnel boring
(41:23):
machine and the cover method, you can type in subways
SU beat W A Y S into the search bar
at how stuff works dot com and it'll bring up
this fine article by Tracy V. Wilson. Uh. And since
I said search bar, it's time for listening to now. Uh,
this one was an anniversary of UM two two young
(41:45):
people in love. Okay, we had something to do with that. Okay,
guys have never written in before. I just thought I
would be appropriate. Uh, seeing as my boyfriend and I
are celebrating our three year anniversary. Is partly due to you, guys.
A few years back, Nathan was trying and failing to
win over my heart, and then he began striking up
conversations about the weirdest things like abandoned cities, blood pressure,
(42:07):
and robots. I found this odd at first, but then
began to love this quirk of his. It's like she's
been in love with us, let's get real. Yeah, but Nathan,
he brought up the blood pressure episode. Well that's what
she says, That's what she said. Uh, long story short,
he ended up winning me over. Not long ago. I
(42:27):
was poking around his iTunes library. Oh yeah, that's dangerous, uh,
and discovered the source of his information YouTube. We both
love the show now and sometimes sneak out of our
houses to make spontaneous midnight trips to McDonald's and listen
to your show while eating Big Max in the car
and young love so sweet like that sweet and terrible
for your arteries. Uh. From time to time, I'll make
(42:49):
him pancakes for dinner. Uh, and we'll listen. I love
that and we'll listen as we Really, I do all
the cooking he does. However, get all agitated when I
where I mentioned that Chuck has a sexy voice. Came
to see him like throwing his pancakes and stuffing around
the apartment. Josh is sexy and that is from Monique
(43:12):
in California. And um, congratulations Monique and Nathan pancakes for dinner.
It's right. A couple of that listens to s Y
s K together stays together exactly. UM, let's see if
we brought you together. I want to hear about that,
right sure, Um, if we've brought you in a loved
one together or it's strange to you from your family,
(43:32):
either way, UM, we want to know about it. You
can tweet to us at s Y s K Podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff.
You should go for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you should Know from House stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bright. Uh, just sitting there normally right, Yeah,
I'm not doing anything unusual. I think we should have
(00:23):
started this with taking the A Train. I think we
should have changed up our music. Well, let's do that. Okay,
how about this? All right? Howe? How we are we
train to find the quickest way to get um? We
(00:45):
did okay, thanks thanks to the magic of post production,
we did and said that was taking the A Train.
Who made that song? Boy, I don't know who originally
composed it, to be honest, Well, I think I think
we should find out. Well who who just performed it? Well,
there's many versions. Well what's the one you selected, like
a week from now? Uh, I don't know. Did they
(01:11):
do a train? Now it's a jazz tune? Oh? John Coltrane?
Did he do it? Let's go with Coltrane? Man, maybe
I should just do it and that that that then? Oh?
Is that that song? Yeah? Thinking the A Train? That's
a good song. Is it instrumental? Because you know a
lot of those instrumentals actually have lyrics. What the old
jazz tunes. Yeah. Really they in the train. That's it
(01:36):
that You're right? Okay, let's go with Duke Ellington's version.
Duke Ellington did the a train at the beginning of
this episode. I hoped everyone liked it. The Duke. We
haven't heard it yet, that's right. Um So, Chuck, I
know that you know what the subway is because we've
been on the subway together. Yeah. Do you remember when
we were in New York. Um, I believe it was
(01:59):
for ABC Go, our first little opportunity there, and we
were going to meet you me yea, And I remember
I met you me Uh that was that where in
that bar? Afterwards? Well, I mean I worked with her,
but then I was like, that was the first time
you ever hung up? Yeah exactly. Um. So we were
we were going and that was my first time in
the New York subway, and I remember we were looking
(02:20):
at the subway and um, the the whole thing just
turned into like this series of confusing lines to me
and like suddenly I was blind and like holding your arm,
and like I had the mind of a child, and
not even like a really bright child either. It was
just kind of like what does it say, um, and
(02:40):
I can report after being back in New York with
you me several times that I do that to her still,
that we're enabling you was what's going on? I think
it is. I think if you guys had thrown me
in and be like you figure it out, figure it out,
I could have, but I don't have to. Um and uh.
It's kind of nice because it's really infusing. So when
(03:00):
you go to New York, you just kind of like
just go with Yumi's wind wherever she blows kind of
but the wind is coming from her heavy size that
she's the one who has to like read the subway. Yeah. Um.
But now that I've read this article how subways work,
I don't understand the New York subway system any more
(03:21):
than I did before I read this article. But I
can tell you that the rails are made of thirty
five ft long pieces of carbon steel that are five
and a half inches tall and one and a half
inches wide, And you could run any train, any train
on the world, in the world on those rails, not
in the world, but at least in New York, because
(03:42):
I guess there's different cages, but there the New York
subway system was designed so that you could just kind
of if you wanted to, like go to Cleveland on
a subway train, you could. Yeah, that's I was designed. Yeah,
they could put it on just a regular railway track,
then go to Cleveland and then you get to Cleveland. Ego, jeez,
(04:03):
I want to go back to New York. Cleveland's where
the first stoplight in the country was. Did you know that? Really?
I like Cleveland. I'm just kidding. That's where my home
away from home is now. Oh yeah, so it was.
Now they're an Acron, but yeah, it's a suburb of Cleveland.
I never realized that. And I'm from Ohio and I
didn't realize that it was a suburb. It's like half
(04:25):
hour or so. I always thought Acron was more towards Dayton. Yeah, alright,
so Dayton, let's talk about it all right, let's talk
about subways. The Metro and France. Five hundred forty seven
yards every five forty seven yards, you're gonna find a
subway station. Yeah, that's pretty good. No, no, not even there.
(04:49):
There's no building in Paris that's more than five botch
that one. No, but it really you helped build up
the drama okay, Um, the the Tube in London, mind
the gap everyone, Um, two hundred and seventy five stations,
and our dear beloved New York Subway system four hundred
sixty eight as of now, packed into like two hundred
(05:12):
and sixty square miles. Yeah, which is that's pretty impressive.
And that's why the New York subway system looks like
a play of spaghetti man. It's really tough to read.
It's not just me. It can't just be it's not.
You just have to zero in on your area and
then you're like, oh, just you gotta blur your eyes
and block out everything else. And then everyone behind you
was looking at you like tourists. Yeah, exactly what's got
(05:34):
his eyes crossed? And why? Why is does that guy
next to him look like Ronnie Millsap all of a
sudden because I saw him walk down here? Just fine.
The London Underground is the oldest, open in eighteen sixty three.
The Metro was next in hundred in New York not
far behind in nineteen o four. And Tracy, who wrote
a very thorough article this is a Tracy V. Wilson Joy. Yeah,
(05:56):
you know it's gonna be good. Um. She points out
that this they all kind of happened within pretty dense
space of time. Because the Industrial Revolution people were out
in farming and and they're like, screw this, I need
a decent egg roll. Yeah, I'm gonna move into the
city where I can get a job in a factory.
Well yeah, and before that there weren't jobs and factories
(06:17):
because there weren't factories. Part of the Industrial Revolution was
the rise of factories. Everybody threw down their agrarian tools
like scites, forget this hole, I'm out of here, right right,
clever word play, thank you, um, and they moved to
the cities. And when they moved to the cities, all
of a sudden there was a lot of people who
(06:37):
needed to move about and they didn't have cars, partially
because cars hadn't been invented yet, that was one reason,
but also even beyond that, like not everybody could afford
a horse, but they still need to get someplace. So
it's a good point. City fathers in these areas Paris London,
London first, and then Um because I think it was
(06:59):
the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, and then and then
New York. Um said all right, we need to figure
out how to move a bunch of these people at once,
and what they came up with was mass transit, but
it was all above ground mass transit, and it involved horses.
Remember the Wing Cries Typhoid Merry episode. One horse produces
(07:19):
twenty pounds of poop per day, and New York had
like a hundred thousand horses or something like that walking around. Yeah,
you know how much poopa subway train produces zero. Yeah,
there's probably a couple of guys pooping on the trains,
but attribute that to the guy on the train. That's
not really the subway. That's true. It is not exhaust
as you as you would call horses spoop um, they
(07:42):
wouldn't call it, So you're right. They had horse drawn
carriages and these cool things called omnibusses, which were longer
horse drawn carriages. Now they're known by their slang term bus.
Oh yeah, that's what that's what a bus is. I'm
glad you brought that up. People in New York. Worst
in New York. If you're in New York, you got
it all figured out. But tourist in New York, I
(08:05):
would recommend that you occasionally take a bus trip. Don't
be afraid of the bus, like a regular bus or
a tourist bus, a double dunker bus. Don't take those, No,
a regular bus, you're you're a little metro card. You
might even know this if you've just been in New
York like once. It works on the buses so as
well as the subways. And a lot of times if
you're like uptown at the park, you're like, man, I
(08:27):
can't find a subway stop near me. I need to
get downtown. Just walk to the edge and chances are
you going to see a bus with its own little lane.
It's just going south and you get a nice views
of everything you're out out and about above ground. And
that's just my advice of tourist. Don't be afraid of
the busses in New York. It could be a great
way to get around. There's also cabs, you know. Yeah,
(08:48):
but you know those are expensive, man. Yeah yeah, I
mean not on Discovery channels. But when I'm there on
my own dime, I take a lot of buses and
subway yeah sure, and it's subway yeah yeah, But I
didn't realize you took the bus. Yeah, buses are great.
I had no idea. So you take the bus and
(09:09):
you know where your local elector lives. That's right, that's
pretty impressive, chuck. So what happened with these buses though?
And with all the horsepoop? As they said, this is
getting out of hand. Um, we need to go underground
because there's no more room up here. Yeah. We we'd
love to build trains, but we can't because there's too
many people, so too many bagel shops. So London did
(09:31):
it first, right, eighteen sixty three is when it opened. Yeah,
god knows when they started construction. Look at someone knows
God besides God. Um, and uh, then within forty years,
I guess Paris open. There's because it was such a
huge success. And I mean it was just brilliant. The
(09:51):
problem is it was also like planning wise, it was
a brilliant move, but um, construction wise, it makes almost
no sense whatsoever. It's like, Hey, where's the hardest place
we can put this mass transit system. I've got it. Yeah,
through a river like under bedrock, um, and basically through
(10:13):
every obstacle that we can create that we've already created. Yeah,
that's a good point. Talk about this. These days, they
have this really cool machine called the tunnel boring machine. Yeah,
did you see these? Yeah, it looks awesome. It's basically
like a tremor worm, Yeah, but a mechanized one that
won't turn on you. Um and I hope people caught
(10:35):
that little reference. Which one. So this TVM tunnel boring
machine um has disc and scrapers, crushes rock into into
pebbles and sand. It has like a conveyor belt that
comes out the back, so it is kind of likeating
and then dudes get rid of that stuff. And uh,
it actually supports the tunnel as it digs and does
(10:57):
a really really great job. But um, we all love
the TV. They're fairly new though. They didn't have these
back in the day. Um So back in the day
they had to do it by hand and picks, shovels,
dynamite yeah or TNT, depending on where your preferences lie. Um. Yeah.
(11:17):
So this was kind of a problem in that you
didn't have a conveyor belt. You had to use pick.
You frequently ran into rock and sometimes you had to
dig into the bedrock, which you know, bedrock that's just
like that's the actual Earth's surface. Everything else like yeah,
mudd and dirt that's just like runoff. Did you realize that. Yeah,
I just recently realized that I've done that for years.
(11:40):
But that bedrock it's kind of tough to get through. Yeah,
New York City alone, UM had eight thousand laborers to
work on this project, about sixty of which died. And
I don't even know if they have account on the
injury sustained. I'm sure it was like sixty a day injured.
Do you think I don't know thousands of injuries? Let's
(12:01):
just say that, UM, did you look up the New
Austrian tunneling method? I did. I want to know about this.
I didn't have a chance to. I don't. I can't
tell you. Please tell me it is. It had like
eight different tenants, so it's not so much a method
of digging as it is a, as Tracy points out,
a collection of techniques for digging and finding out where
(12:23):
to dig. Yeah, where to dig and how to dig? Um?
So like, what are they like? No? No, they're not
random like that. But you know, we should do an
article on tunneling period because it's pretty amazing. And the
reason they called it the New Austrian method was to
distinguish it from the old Austrian methods. I guess that
(12:45):
they must be the king tunnel ers like Charles Bunsen.
Is he Austrian? Uh no, but he was the tunneler
in Great Escape? But didn't he was the tunnel expert. Um,
so that that's that from Reservoir Dogs. That was a
line at one point someone says, he's like Charles Bronson
in Great Escape he was digging tunnels. How did they
(13:09):
miss that line? I don't know. Well, so you just
referenced the reference of a movie. The method that they
use for a long time, um was the cut and
cover method, which this is crazy. They like literally rip
up a street, put a subway there, and then build
the street back on top. It makes uttering complete sense
(13:30):
for a couple of routes. Number one, subways are meant
to serve like areas streets, right, It's basically like a
street that happens to be underground that moves a bunch
of people at once. Yeah. Okay, so following a street
makes a lot of sense, especially if you're a planner. Um.
The problem is you are completely ripping up a street
(13:50):
temporarily because you're what you're doing is you're digging a
trench and then rebuilding the earth above it. But the
good thing is is you can rebuild of the earth
above it even stronger. It's like Steve Austin or something
like that, right, Yeah, Like you dig a trench as
far down as you want your subway to be, and
you put in pilings, you drive them down, preferably into
(14:13):
bedrock if you can, and then you put like tresses
and beams over those nice buttress every now and then. Yeah,
and then you can rebuild the ground in the road
up above it. You can also reroute any um sewer lines,
any power lines, any anything through these tresses and being frankly,
I'm a cut and cover method guy. Yeah, Well, it
(14:35):
also makes sense because the streets are probably not gonna
You're probably not gonna run into as many obstacles, Um,
like a basement of a major building. Yeah, exactly, because
there wouldn't be a major building in the middle of
the street. There was a cool part in The Devil
in the White City. Did you ever read that man
that's on the list? You like it a lot um
where they're talking about how Chicago built the first skyscrapers.
(15:00):
Oh yeah, yeah, and um, basically they figured out how
to float the foundations of the building above the bedrock,
because the bedrock was really far down and there was
like the sandy shifting soil. I can't remember it specifically,
but it's like, Wow, I'm I'm riveted by this description
of an architectural technique, a building technique that they figured
(15:22):
out so you didn't even need the murders. I found
them superfluous. Really, it was a good book, and I'm
not one for like popular fiction like that is popular
semi fiction, historical fiction. Yeah, it's good. I like it. Um,
So we're talking about obstacles, and that is a big
(15:43):
problem when you're when you're digging tunnels, especially under a
city that's already has an infrastructure in place. Um, you're
going to run into things that you can move. Sometimes,
you're gonna run into things that you can't move sometimes
that you have to move around. So, like you ever
in in a subway, especially New York that really slows
(16:03):
down and takes one of those hard turns, It maybe
because you know that's the direction you need to start
going now, but more than likely it's because they had
to reroute it, especially if it's an old section of
the subway. Yeah, very true, because now you can just
put the TVM on that thing, and it's like, whatever
you need, guys, all go get it. Well, yeah, but
(16:24):
I'm talking more along the lines of man made obstructions
like gas lines, thematic lines. But with with those like
water lines are probably very tough, but all of those
can be rerouted. You can basically reroute the line rather
than reroute the subway line. It probably depends on which
one is more cost effective, is what they go with.
You know. Um you can also, like I said, if
(16:45):
you're doing a cut and cover method, you can, Um,
you can basically hang those same lines from these You
can use the beams and tresses as support for those
same lines. It's that makes sense. Uh. Sometimes, as Tracy
(17:27):
pointed out, you see lines that aren't on any blueprints.
You're like, wait a minute, what's this big pipe doing here?
It doesn't show up on any registry that we have
for the city. Uh, we gotta find out what this
is to see if we can move it. Yeah. Maybe
it's old and unused and you can throw it away.
That'd be great. Maybe it's full of dangerous gases which
(17:49):
is not great, or full of water, or maybe you
hit an aquifer. Yeah, water is a big one. Yeah,
if you hit an aquifer, well you know what that is.
That's just a bunch of water pooled on top of
the bedrock, which is really the surface of the earth. Um.
You you can hit an aquifer, you might have to
say across the river, like the East River. Um. And
(18:10):
when you do that, you have to generally tunnel under it,
which is extremely dangerous because then not only you don't
just have a street that can collapse on top of you,
you have a river that can collapse on top of you.
And rivers tend to weigh more than streets. Yeah, and
you can drown and a river you can't drown in
a street, right, that's it's full of water. UM. I
thought this was pretty clever. How they how was it
(18:32):
Paris in the sin before We're drowning? So they basically
put down like pods and then sent compressed air into
the pod and blew all the water out. And then
men went into these pods and worked. And they use
the same thing or a similar technique in um building
the Brooklyn Bridge pylons. But the problem was like people
(18:55):
would come up and get the bends from working beneath
the water surface, but in a dry like area, compressed
air because they were down so far and they just
come up without thinking about it and get the bends. Well,
the good news is if you're working under the water
like that, you're probably gonna get a little pay bump,
like hazard pay as they call it. UM. And the
(19:16):
other cool thing they did in Paris too, was they
they found that um, some of this mud and like
wet dirt, which is mine, was too hard to deal with,
so they froze it with calcium chloride and all of
a sudden they removed it like it was a big
chunk of clay. Yeah, pretty neat. It was very clever.
And that was old timing construction too. I was that
(19:38):
back in the day, I believe, so I didn't realize
that they were that clever back then. It's pretty smart. Um.
You can also basically use the cut and cover method
in Uh your pick on that, and I love that.
I'm gonna make you a T shirt. This is cut
and cover, but I wouldn't wear that. It just makes
sense to me, Yeah, it does. Um. You can use
(19:59):
the cut and cover method across the river. That's what
they did in the San Francisco Bay. Um. They basically
just cut the tunnel they wanted and prefabricated the um
sections of the subway tunnel and put it in the
trench and then just cover it back up and I
guess like waiting for the water to leak out. Over
(20:20):
the course of several decades UM. In the very old
cities like Paris, they have also uncovered some pretty interesting things.
Um like catacombs full of human bones. Yeah, there's a
whole documentary on that. Cannonballs, quarries, very deep quarries. This
is kind of cool. I thought this was very cool.
(20:42):
Some of the quarries in Paris were so deep that
they had to actually build bridges, underground bridges for the
subway to get across. It's an elevated train underground. Yeah,
and nuts across ancient Roman quarries. Man, I mean that's crazy. Yeah. Um,
there's a lot of cool stuff like that, um like
(21:02):
abandoned subway stations if you're into that kind of thing,
and I know a lot of people who listen to
us are. There's a website called um NYC subway dot
org and they have like little reports on like stations
when they were built, when they were decommissioned, why photos
taken of them after they were abandoned. And there's actually
(21:23):
a little trick, chuck um where if you were on
the six train and now you're talking about do you
I think so the City Hall stop. Yeah. So if
you're on the six train and you're headed towards the
Brooklyn Bridge stop and you stay on right, the train
will actually go around a loop to turn around and
go the other way. That loop goes through an old
(21:46):
abandoned um Metro stop or mt A stop, And um,
it's this incredible stained glass architecture, like preserved turn of
the century subway station that's just like frozen in time.
It was in operation from like nineteen o four, and
they used to make everybody get off at Brooklyn Bridge,
(22:07):
but now they'll let people stay on. And do they
Because I couldn't find recent information, I saw an article
today that said they did that for a while, another
or not, and then I saw another one that said
no you can. Um. I wonder if it's just arbitrary,
like depending on who's I know that they cleaned it
up in two thousand four and made it like kind
of I don't think they like put tons of money
(22:27):
towards restoration, but they cleaned it up really nice and
allowed like light to come through the stained glass, and
for a little while they let people stop and get
off and kind of tour it. But I know they
shut that down, Yeah, because the whole reason, well one
of the big reasons they showed it done because there's
such a tight curve that the um, the modern subway
cars can't sit flush up against the platform, so there's
(22:48):
a pretty big gap that people would have to jump
over to get off. So I can imagine you can't
get off. But from what I saw it was a
two thousand article it said you can stay on. Now. Well,
I've been meaning to check that out and going in November,
I'll check it out. Yeah, dude, let me know, report back.
I will report back. Okay. Um, So, rolling stock or
(23:08):
what these trains are actually called. And in some cities
the rolling stock is automated, like Denmark. The one they're
building now doesn't have drivers, which is kind of neat.
They have like you know, laser beams and uh and
all these crazy surveillance systems to drive the train. The
(23:29):
computerized what no what they do? And um, they navigate it.
They use break heat to generate power. They will even
let you know, someone stuck in the door. Um, yeah,
we'll open the door back up and did not drive away,
not drive away while someone stuck. And New York they're
actually trying out some of these now too. Actually yeah,
(23:53):
I didn't see when this article was written, but they
were the Tracy made mention of the um the the
addition that's being made to Long Island. Is this going
on still and like just this revamping that's going on constant, Well,
the revamping I think it was a seventeen billion dollar
bid in ninety four and there adding new lines or
(24:15):
trying to spruce up the trains and like you know,
replace the old cars. They're improving the air circulation, which
she points out like just because it's open up top
and a little bit of air can get in, doesn't
mean you don't have to have like a massive air
circulation system. And if you've ever been like deep within
the bowels of the subway system, then you might be
(24:36):
wondering if it's working properly, But it is, or you'd
be dead. Yeah, you'd die. Yeah, Yeah, they're the It
takes a tremendous amount of air to be recirculated to
allow humans to live underground. I think she said something
was it? Ye, six thousand cubic feet of fresh air
per minute is what is what they're shooting for. I
don't think it's there now, but that's their goal. Should
(25:00):
we talk about some of the signals, yeah, train signals. Yeah. So, um,
before a long long time ago, when a driver reached
a stoplight and had to come to a stop, they
had to put a key in and turn it to
reset the stoplight and be able to drive. And there's
a term called keying by that they still use. So
(25:21):
they do still use it. Now it's much more automated, um,
but there's there's still a set of signals where it's
like stop, proceed with caution, green light, you know, just
go as fast as you can. They do a speed limits. Yeah,
of course. Yeah, they're posted too, aren't they. Uh yeah,
I mean the driver can see them at least imagine
(25:44):
if you were looking and you're up front, you could
probably see him and to have the driver around the
shoulder and be like, we're going way faster than the Yeah.
I mean Martha here in Atlanta, which is sort of
a subway, you can um, I mean you can ride
it right up front by the the person and I've
done this many times and just kind of spide in
on how you drive the Marta train, and every time
I look, I'm like, I could totally drive this thing
(26:04):
right now. Oh yeah, yeah, dude. It's just like it's
got a little forward lever and a neutral and a
reverse and a break and then that's pretty much it. Yeah,
I could do it right now. You can drive it
through arms Crost right mark. Have you seen it's been
going around Facebook, the Marta map compared to the rest
of the world's Facebook. Oh, it's like New York, London, Paris,
(26:27):
and they all look like a play a spaghetti And
then it's Atlanta with its little plus sign plus sign
it's got two branches. But I will argue that, I mean,
it does suck in a way. But I will argue
that Atlanta didn't build it subway in eighteen sixty three.
They built it in like nineteen seventies something, and but yeah,
it stopped. Okay, I was gonna say, this isn't a
(26:48):
work in progress. No, they've added some stuff since. Yeah,
a little bit, but really it's pretty bad. It does
suck in every way. I mean, it's it's great if
it goes from the one place you need to go
to the other place you need to go. Sure, and
chances are that's not the case, and it sometimes it does, though,
especially if you live near a rail line. But even still,
you make one big l Yeah, I mean it's great
(27:11):
for me. I'm like Falcons game day, you know, right
down the street, Hop on there my brown bag, Hop off.
I'm right at the stadium. Yeah, it's nice your brown bag, so,
you know, for hyperventilation, right in case something bad goes down,
in case the six hundred thousand cubic leaders of error
isn't moved through now most of Atlanta is above ground subway. Really,
(27:34):
that's what I'm saying. It sucks in every way. Uh.
These things run on electricity these days, not like the
old steam train days. Yeah. I don't even know that
that was worth mentioning. Well, I think so because you
have the third rail that everyone knows is very dangerous. Yeah,
six volts in New York and you have a hundred
and twenty coming into your house. Really yeah, oh wow,
(27:55):
So it'll get you. It'll fry rap like they're not kidding. Uh. Uh.
Sometimes the third rail is between the two tracks. Sometimes
it's on the outside and then you generally have a
a brush or a shoe sliding shoe or a wheel
that connects to that and that supplies power to the train.
And um, they used to have its own power plant
(28:18):
to run the subway system in New York. I guess
these days they just mooch it from everyone. You know,
if you follow a chord in the subway, it's actually
going into somebody's living room. It's coming through the window.
(29:03):
All right, I think the fact of the podcast, I
will give it to you, but to me, it's the
geometry train. Yeah. I've seen these before, but um you have.
I've seen ones that were just there. It looks like
a little platform or something like that going by. Yeah, well,
or I dreamt one, uh yeah, this one in the
(29:25):
diagrams like full of computers and people. I haven't seen that.
But basically a geometry train, like if you have you know,
hundreds and thousands and millions of miles of subway track,
and some of it dates back a hundred years um
thanks to seismic activity, fire um weather peoples. Yes, all
(29:49):
this stuff is going to basically pull your checks out
of alignment. And tracks need to be fairly precise to
keep trains from like hopping off right so to um
to basically keep or find I should say, the rails
that are out of alignment. They have this thing called
the geometry train, which have your lasers that you're so
fond of, and uh, it basically just goes down the
(30:10):
track every track, and these things are running like twenty
four hours a day, seven days a week. Um. Yeah,
the one in New York runs at all times. Cool
and uh, and you would think it would have to.
I wonder how long it takes for a geometry train
to hit every track. Yeah. Man, that's a good question.
It's gotta take years. But anyway, it just rides along
and takes precise measurements of the alignment of the tracks,
(30:32):
and anything that's over one point to five inches out
of alignment, there's a report that's violed and says go
fix that track. And they also, just as an added bonus,
the geometry train finds hot spots using heat centers and
shoots them with fire extinguishers, Like if there's something flammable
in the other track, they could uh combust, whether it's
(30:53):
like a Derrito's bag, a cool ranch Derrito's bag, Uh,
any kind of Derrida goes back, Well, the dudes probably
already toast anyway, if he's on the third rail, he is,
And uh, that's a good reference for a spontaneous combustion podcasts.
In New York City and in many cities, the fair
does not cover the costs of running this massive system
(31:16):
about half yeah in New York. So um, if you're
complaining about the price of a subway New York, just
remember it could be double yeah if they were to
cover all the costs. So counter blessings new Yorkers. Yeah,
don't complain to me, and thank New York for big government.
Do you like the subway? Uh? Tracy points out that
(31:38):
the subways and at least the tunnels over the years
have been the site of refuge and terror. That was
a great setup, that's true though, Oh yeah it is. Um.
During World War one and two in London and Paris,
I believe people saw it cover against air raids. Um. Yeah,
(32:00):
in the subways. But world War One I was like,
that's when they were dropping bricks on each other, Like really,
that's how you would take down a plane. You fly
over another airplane and drop a brick and just go
right through a wing. And that was that for the plane. Yeah,
I thought they at least had the little tube like
the and it would shoot something like this somewhere mortar,
(32:21):
but that's ground based. That's those are mortars. Yeah, well yeah,
I guess you would still need to take refuge against
the mortar. Doesn't have to be a plane, and a
mortar comes through an air so yeah, air raid. Do
you want to get technical? But yes, World War two
for sure, during the blitz um of London. There are
a lot of people underground in the tube seeking help
(32:45):
and shelter. That's right, as are the mold people. Um,
if you haven't seen the documentary Dark Days Highly recommended,
is that about the mold people? Or this is like
the theres a. It's a group of homeless people. They
don't identify themselves as mold mold people as one of
those terms. You know, the people above ground made up,
uh somewhat sensational, But there are people living underground, some
(33:06):
I haven't been up in a long long time. In
this dude made the documentary. I think he actually went
underground and lived there for a couple of years to
do this. Yeah, yeah, so he wasn't like, you know,
I'll be down there for a few hours on Wednesday,
but then I have aybody lost appointment after that, so
I need to get back above ground. Um. And then
(33:26):
everyone remembers the Tokyo sarin gas episode killed twelve people.
Sure that was incredibly frightening. UM London, thousand five seven
seven it was July seven. Oh yeah, was that significant
or no? That's just how they referred to it, like
we referred to nine eleven is nine eleven interesting? And
(33:50):
then in our own nine eleven UM it destroyed subway
station and damaged some of the track. I think we
talked about that in the UM nine eleven memorial. I
think you're right. Didn't they preserve it somehow? Like they're
one of the trains is going to be in the museum.
I think so, because that rang a bell to me.
I'm gonna hit that up in November as well. Oh man,
(34:11):
I can't wait to go to that. It's gonna be
something else. UM. Originally you had tickets, then that became coins.
These days you might have an R F I D ticket. UM.
I think that was. I was in Switzerland. It was
like an honor system thing. Really. Yeah. I remember being
there and looking around like I don't see like where
(34:31):
you put the ticket in or anything. I think it's
just on our system. It was either Switzerland or Sweden.
I think of Switzerland, and I just remember thinking, these
people are crazy. So you just didn't pay a cent
just to teach them a lesson. Yeah, no, I paid
my fare, so chuck. Train car. If you are a
(34:51):
train car, how how many axles are you going to
go through? If you're in New York, if you're part
of their system in your lifetime, well, you're gonna live
about forty to fifty years. Um, you will go through
twenty four axles and twenty four motors over the span,
so that'll be two years. You're gonna get gussied up
(35:12):
a little. You're gonna get forty eight wheels over that time. Yeah,
not bad, not at once. And at the end of
your lifespan, they will dumpy in the ocean off the
coast of South Carolina. Have you seen pictures of that? Yeah? Yeah,
I found a whole little gallery. It's only like ten pictures.
But um on fast Code design um dot com they
have it's called surreal photos of subway cars being thrown
(35:36):
into the ocean. It is surreal it's really because you
look at that and you're like, no, how could you? Yeah,
and then oh, it's good for the environment somehow, right,
as long as they take the gas out first in
the oil. All right. So I got some more little
fun things. Uh. The overhaul and repair shop on Coney
Island is where it all goes down. Um. They have
(35:57):
over one three over five hundred thousand square feet of
shop space. We just counted that fast. Yeah, I just
you know, five thousands wasn't kind of each square foot? Um.
And this is where everything goes to get worked on
in New York. Everything they can even work on regular trains. Um.
(36:19):
They can store eighteen hundred subway cars there. And they
have a car wash that um subway car wash o business.
It cleans the exteriors of over one thousand cars once
a week and that's fifty thousand washes in a year.
(36:41):
It's a lot of washes. Then they just came out
with the new UM survey on the New York subway
system and the Q line was ranked the number one line.
Which where is that? I'm not sure? So Q runs
between Coney Island still all Avenue in Brooklyn and Astoria.
Did mize Boulevard and Queens m So in other words,
(37:02):
that's the one no one takes. So it's very clean.
It's very clean. And for the fourth year in a row,
the Sea train was ranked as the worst UM. It
failed an all four measures amount of scheduled service delaysed
caused by mechanical breakdowns, cleanliness, and announcements UM, whether or
not the announcements like or even something you can hear
(37:25):
makes sense, or whether it's just garbled mess. Get see
this is why I can't like, I can't do it
by myself. Yeah, well, you certainly don't get any help
most of the time from the the conductor. Yeah, driver,
Yeah we should we should know this. I would think conductor,
ticket taker, ticket taker. Uh. And then New York ranks
(37:48):
number seven and ridership in the world. Uh, Tokyo is first, Moscow, Beijing, Shanghai,
soul Ah Quangs. How where's that China is it? I
would imagine, Well, I mean that's a Chinese word. I
just haven't heard of that. Paris, Mexico City in Hong Kong,
(38:08):
London is not even in the top ten. And and
that's the number one UM. But you know why, because
World War two happened, and everybody got cars afterwards, and
a lot of subway lines just kind of fell into disrepair,
and like a whole generation was raised without really using subways. Yeah,
and black cabs are so roomy and private, but not
(38:30):
just in London, in UM the in the United States especially.
That's true. Yeah, because we talked about the l A
H and why the cars become the predominant form of
transportation um number of miles traveled by an average subway
car um in between repairs in New York that was
seven thousand, two thousand, eleven hundred and seventy two. But
(38:53):
I think that means they're taking better care of them,
not that they're just chirking the responsibilities New York in
two thousand eleven, all the subways combined traveled three hundred
forty two million miles, and in total, New York's four
hundred sixty eight stations are only sixty fewer than the
(39:13):
rest of the subway systems in the United States combined. Wow,
pretty cool. That's my favorite. And end to end they
always have these. If you laid the tracks end to
end New York cities would go from New York to Chicago.
That's it. I thought for sure something now just New
York to Chicago. Yeah, I'm a little disappointed in the
(39:35):
lowest station. If you've ever felt a little weird a
hundred ninety first Street in Manhattan, that's because you are
hundred and eighty feet below ground. That crazy probably shift.
It ran into a shift problem. The lady to go down.
You should tell people what that is. Well, it's very
hard rock. It's a metamorphic rocks. The flake rather than break,
(39:57):
so it's very hard to get through. That's my motto,
flake don't break. Right. We came up with like three
mottos and catchphrases in this one cut and cover, flake
don't break. And I guess don't take the C train?
Is that maybe? And the C train is like it's
insult to injury because I think the A, C and
E or like the blue line, and the A and
(40:18):
the E are doing pretty well, and the sea is
like the ugly step child. Where is it? Where? Oh,
it goes all over like you can get it down
in the West Village and then I believe it goes
north and then cuts over somewhere around Midtown, then goes
up the East side. I think it doesn't go into Brooklyn.
I don't think so, is it the L train? I
don't remember. You know more than I do. Man, I
(40:41):
just I miss the old and I guess they still
have some, but the old red like the seven train
I remember had those old red trains that look like trains.
They didn't look like subways. I don't they look like
regular locomotives to me. I like my subways to look
like subways. Trains should look like trains. Smells like poop gum.
Apparently in New York the gum is so bad and
(41:02):
some that you can lose your shoe. I can see
that you can actually get mired in the gum. Um.
Have you got anything else? Give up your seat for
the ladies. That's what I gotta say. That's a big one. Um. Yeah,
good going, Chuck. That's a fine ending. If you want
to learn more about subway etiquette and the tunnel boring
(41:23):
machine and the cover method, you can type in subways
SU beat W A Y S into the search bar
at how stuff works dot com and it'll bring up
this fine article by Tracy V. Wilson. Uh. And since
I said search bar, it's time for listening to now. Uh,
this one was an anniversary of UM two two young
(41:45):
people in love. Okay, we had something to do with that. Okay,
guys have never written in before. I just thought I
would be appropriate. Uh, seeing as my boyfriend and I
are celebrating our three year anniversary. Is partly due to you, guys.
A few years back, Nathan was trying and failing to
win over my heart, and then he began striking up
conversations about the weirdest things like abandoned cities, blood pressure,
(42:07):
and robots. I found this odd at first, but then
began to love this quirk of his. It's like she's
been in love with us, let's get real. Yeah, but Nathan,
he brought up the blood pressure episode. Well that's what
she says, That's what she said. Uh, long story short,
he ended up winning me over. Not long ago. I
(42:27):
was poking around his iTunes library. Oh yeah, that's dangerous, uh,
and discovered the source of his information YouTube. We both
love the show now and sometimes sneak out of our
houses to make spontaneous midnight trips to McDonald's and listen
to your show while eating Big Max in the car
and young love so sweet like that sweet and terrible
for your arteries. Uh. From time to time, I'll make
(42:49):
him pancakes for dinner. Uh, and we'll listen. I love
that and we'll listen as we Really, I do all
the cooking he does. However, get all agitated when I
where I mentioned that Chuck has a sexy voice. Came
to see him like throwing his pancakes and stuffing around
the apartment. Josh is sexy and that is from Monique
(43:12):
in California. And um, congratulations Monique and Nathan pancakes for dinner.
It's right. A couple of that listens to s Y
s K together stays together exactly. UM, let's see if
we brought you together. I want to hear about that,
right sure, Um, if we've brought you in a loved
one together or it's strange to you from your family,
(43:32):
either way, UM, we want to know about it. You
can tweet to us at s Y s K Podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff.
You should go for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com
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