March 24, 2018 • 44 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):
Happy Friday afternoon, everybody. This is Chuck here with this
week's Stuff you Should Know selects, Select Sean. It's called subways, Colin, Huh,
what are they good for? I can't remember if I
came up with that silly fun name or if Josh did. Uh.
I think it was me, But at any rate, this
(00:21):
is from septem two thousand twelve, and this is just
a great episode. It's just a classic stuff you should know. Um.
I'm fascinated by subways and we kind of hit on
all cylinders on this one, from the creation, invention, and
history of subways to how they're built today. They're just
really a pretty remarkable form of transportation and you should
(00:44):
know more about it. So enjoy subways. Huh what are
they good for? Right now, welcome to Stuff you Should
Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to
(01:06):
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bright. Uh,
just sitting there normally right. Yeah, I'm not doing anything unusually.
I think we should have 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?
(01:28):
How we how we are we? Train to find the
quickest way to get long. Um we 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,
(01:51):
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 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
(02:13):
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? That? You're right? Okay, let's
go with Duke Ellington's version. Duke Ellington did the A
(02:35):
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 a 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 for ABC Go, our first little opportunity there,
(02:57):
and we were going to meet you me. Oh yeah,
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 at the subway and um, the the
(03:19):
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 I turned. 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 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
(03:42):
was what's going on? I think it is. I think
if you guys had thrown me in and be like
you figured 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 confusing. So when you go
to New York, you just kind of like just go
with Umi's wind wherever she blows kind of but the
wind is coming from her heavy size. That she's the
(04:04):
one who has to like read the subway map. Yeah. Um,
But now that I've read this article how subways work,
I don't understand the New York subway system any more
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
(04:24):
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
I guess there's different cages, but there is. The New
York subway system was designed so that you could just
kind of if you wanted to, like go to Cleveland
(04:48):
on a subway train, you could, Yeah, that's I was designed. Yeah,
they could put it on just a regular railway track
and go to Cleveland. And then you get to Cleveland
and go, jeez, 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.
It's where my home away from home is now. Oh yeah,
(05:11):
so it was. Now they're an acron, but 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 hour or so. I always thought Acro
was more towards Dayton. Yeah, alright, so Dayton, let's talk
about it, all right, let's talk about subways. The Metro
(05:32):
and France. Five hundred forty seven yards every five forty
seven yards, you're gonna find a subway station that's pretty good. No,
not even there. There's no building in Paris that's more
than five A botch that one. No, but it really
you helped build up the drama. Okay, Um, the Tube
(05:55):
in London, mind the gap everyone, Um, two hundred and
seventy five stations and our dear beloved New York subway
system four D and sixty eight as of now packed
into like two hundred and sixty square miles, 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
(06:15):
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,
he's got 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 the London Underground is the oldest open in eighteen
(06:40):
sixty three, The Metro was next in nine hundred, and
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, 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 are outing farming and and they're like, screw this,
(07:03):
I need a decent egg roll. Ye, 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 because there weren't factories. Part of the Industrial
Revolution was the rise of factories, everybody threw down their
grarian tools like scithes, forget this, how I'm out of
here right right? Clever word play, thank you. Um. And
(07:26):
they moved to the cities. And when they moved to
the cities, all of a sudden there was a lot
of people who 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
(07:47):
these areas Paris London, London first and then Um because
I think it was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution,
and then and then New York. Um said all right,
we need to figure out how to move up 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
(08:09):
Typhoid Merry episode. One horse produces 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 there's probably a
couple of guys pooping on the train, but that attribute
that to the guy on the train. That's not really
(08:29):
the subway. That's true. It is not exhaust as you
as you would call horses poop um, I 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,
(08:50):
that's what that's what a bus. I'm glad you brought
that up people in New York. Tourists in New York.
If you're in New York, you got it all figured out.
But tourist in New York, I would recommend that you
occasionally take a bus trip. Don't be afraid of the
bus like a regular bus or a tourist bus double.
Don't take those. No, a regular bus, you're you're a
(09:10):
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 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
(09:30):
get a nice views of everything you're out out and
about up above ground. And that's just my advice of tours.
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, but you know those are expensive, man. Yeah, yeah,
I mean not one Discovery Channel. When I'm there on
(09:51):
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 I had no idea. So you take the bus
and 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 horse poop? As they said, this
(10:12):
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 it first, right eighteen sixty three is when it opened. Yeah,
god knows when they started construction. Look at someone knows
(10:34):
God besides God. Um and uh, then within forty years,
I guess paris open. There is because it was such
a huge success, and I mean it was just brilliant.
The problem is it was also like planning wise, it
was a brilliant move, but um, construction wise, it like
(10:54):
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, right, um,
and basically through every obstacle that we can create that
we've already created. Yeah, that's a good point. Talk about this.
(11:15):
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 that little reference. Which one. So
this TVM tunnel boring machine um, has discs and scrapers,
(11:37):
crushes rock into into pebbles and sand. It has like
a conveyor belt that comes out the back. So it
is kind of likes it and then dudes get rid
of that stuff and it actually supports the tunnel as
it digs and does 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
(11:59):
in the A they had to do it by hand
and picks, shovel dynamite yeah or TNT, depending on where
your preferences lie. Um. Yeah, 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,
(12:19):
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 mudd and dirt that's just like runoff.
Did you realize that? Yeah, I just recently realized that
I've done that for years. But that bedrock, it's kind
of tough to get through. Yeah. New York City alone,
(12:40):
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. Yeah, I'm
sure it was like sixty a day injured. Do you
think I don't know, thousands of injuries. Let's just say that, Um,
did you look up the New Austrian tunneling method? Did
(13:02):
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 to dig. Yeah, where
to dig and how to dig? Um? So like what
are they like? No, they're not random like that. But
(13:28):
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 I guess that they must be the king
tunnel ers like Charles Bunsen. Is he Austrian? Uh no,
but he was the tunnel or in the Great Escape,
(13:49):
but he was the tunnel expert. Um. So that that's
that was from a reservoir dogs. That was a line.
At one point someone says, he's like Charles Bronson and
Great Escape, he was digging tunnels. How did they miss
that line? I don't know. Well, so you just referenced
the reference of a movie. The method that they use
(14:12):
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 for a couple
of routes. Number one, subways are meant to serve like
areas streets, right, It's basically like a street that happens
(14:32):
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 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
(14:53):
can rebuild 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 him pilings, you drive
them down preferably into 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
(15:15):
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 beings. Frankly, I'm a cut
and cover method guy. Yeah. Well, it also makes sense
because the streets are probably not gonna You're probably not
gonna run into as many obstacles. Um, like a basement
(15:38):
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?
Do you like it a lot um where they're talking
about how Chicago built the first skyscrapers. Yeah, yeah, and um,
basically they figured out how to float the foundations of
(16:01):
the building above the bedrock because the bedrock was really
far down and there was like the sandy shifting soil.
And 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 out so you didn't
even need the murders. I found them superfluous. It was
(16:24):
a good book, and I'm not one for like popular
fiction like that popular semi fiction, historical fiction. Yeah, it's good.
I like it. Um. So we're talking about obstacles, and
that is a big problem when you're when you're digging tunnels,
especially under a city that's already has an infrastructure in place. Um,
(16:44):
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, have you
ever been in a subway, especially New York that really
slows 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
(17:06):
had to reroute it. Um, especially if it's an old
section of the subway. 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 I'm talking more along 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
(17:28):
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. UM.
You can also Like I said, if 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. That's true,
(17:51):
that makes sense. Uh. Sometimes, as Tracy pointed out, you
(18:23):
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 is not great, or
(18:44):
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, right, which
is really the surface of the earth. Um, you can
hit it, quefer. You might have to say across the river,
like the East River. Um. And when you do that,
(19:05):
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 Paris in the
(19:27):
Seine 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.
(19:48):
But the problem was like people 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
(20:08):
as they call it. UM. And the other cool thing
they did in Paris too was 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
(20:30):
timing construction too. I was that 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 and uh, your
pick on that. And I love that. I'm gonna make
your t shirt this is cut and cover. I wouldn't
wear that. It just makes sense to me, Yeah, it does. Um.
(20:53):
You can use 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
(21:13):
out over 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. Yeah, cans quarries very
(21:34):
deep quarries. This is kind of cool. I thought this
was very cool. 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
like cool stuff like that, um, like abandoned subway stations. Yeah,
(21:59):
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 a little trick, chuck
(22:20):
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 abandoned um metro stop
(22:43):
or m T 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 and they used to make everybody
get off at Brooklyn Bridge, but now they'll let people
stay on and do they y Because I couldn't find
(23:05):
recent information. I saw an article today that said they
did that for a while. A Noo, they're not, and
then I saw another one that said, no, you can. Um,
I wonder if it's just arbitrary, like depending on 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 towards restoration, but they cleaned
it up really nice and allowed like light to come
(23:26):
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 a pretty big gap that people would have
to jump over to get off. So I can imagine
(23:47):
you can't get off, but from what I saw it
was a two article it said you can stay on. Now. Well,
I've been meaning to check that out. I'm 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
what these trains are actually called. And in some cities
the rolling stock is automated, like Denmark. The one they're
(24:11):
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
computerized what no, what they do and um, they navigate it.
(24:31):
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. In New York, they're
actually trying out some of these now too. Actually yeah,
I didn't see when this article was written, but they were.
They were. Tracy made mention of the um the addition
(24:55):
that's being made to Long Island. Is this going on
still and like just this e vamping 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
trying to spruce up the trains and like you know,
replace the old cars. They're improving the air circulation, which
(25:16):
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. If you've ever been like deep within the
bowels of the subway system, then you might be 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
(25:39):
amount of air to be recirculated to allow humans to
live underground. I think she said something was 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 we talk about some of
the signals, Yeah, train signals. Yeah, so um before a
(26:01):
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 keing buy that they still use, so 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,
(26:23):
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
if you were looking and you're up front, you could
probably see him and to have the drive around the
shoulder and be like we're going way faster than that. Yeah.
(26:45):
I mean Marta 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
right now. Yeah. Yeah, dude. It's just like it's got
a little forward lever and a neutral and a reverse
(27:05):
and a break and then that's pretty much it. Yeah,
I could go do it right now. You can drive
it through arms costs, 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,
and they all look like a play a spaghetti And
then it's Atlanta with its little plus sign plus sign
(27:26):
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 its 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
work in progress. No, they've added some stuff since. Yeah,
a little bit, but really it's pretty bad. It does
(27:48):
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. 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
for me. I'm like Falcon's game day, you know, hop
(28:09):
right down the street, hop on there, my brown bag,
hop off them right at the stadium. Yeah, it's nice.
You're brown bag, so you know for hyperventilation right in
case something bad goes down in case the six hundred
thousand cubic leaders of errors that moved through that most
of Atlanta is above groundway. Really, that's what I'm saying.
(28:29):
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 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, so it'll get you. It'll fry
(28:53):
a rap. They're not kidding. 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 to run the subway
(29:13):
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. All right. I think the
(29:58):
fact of the podcast, I'll 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 to buy. Yeah, well, or I've dreamt one. Uh yeah,
this one in the diagrams like full of computers and people.
(30:22):
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 people. Yes, all this stuff is going to
(30:44):
basically pull your tracks 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, say you're so fond of and uh. It
basically just goes down the track every track. And these
(31:06):
things are running like twenty four hours a day, seven
days a week. Um. Yeah, the one in New York
runs at all times and uh, and you would think
it would have to I wonder how long it takes
for a geometry train to hit every 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
(31:26):
of the tracks, and anything that's over one point to
five inches out of alignment, there's a report that's filed
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 near the track that could uh
combusta whether it's like a Derrito's bag, a cool ranch
(31:50):
Derrito's bag, Uh, any kind of Derrito's bag. Well, the
dude probably already toast. Anyway, he's on the third rail,
he is, And uh, that's a good reference for our
spontaneous combustion podcasts. In New York City and in many cities,
the fair does not cover the costs of running this
massive system about half yeah in New York. So um,
(32:13):
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
the subways and at least the tunnels over the years
(32:36):
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 cover against air raids um in
the subways. And but world War one it was like
(32:57):
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,
but that's ground based, that's those are mortars. Yeah. Well, yeah,
(33:19):
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 if
you want to get technical. But yes, world War two
for sure, Yes, during the blitz um of London. There
are a lot of people underground in the tube seeking
help and shelter. That's right, as are the mold people. Um,
(33:42):
if you haven't seen the documentary Dark Days highly recommended,
is that about the mold people? Or this is like
the there's a it's a group of homeless people. They
don't identify themselves as mold. Mold people is one of
those terms that you know, the people above ground made up? Uh,
somewhat sensational. But there are people live underground. Some I
haven't been up in a long long time. In this
(34:03):
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 everybody
lost appointment after that, so I need to get back
above ground. Um. And then everyone remembers the Tokyo sarin
gas episode killed twelve people. Sure that was incredibly frightening, Um,
(34:28):
London thousand and five seven seven it was July. Oh yeah,
was that significant or no? That's just how they refer
to it, like we referred to nine eleven is nine
eleven seven interesting? And then in our own nine eleven Um,
it destroyed subway station and damaged some of the track.
(34:50):
I think we talked about that in the UM nine
eleven memorial episode. I think you're right, and 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, I can't wait
to go to that. It's going to be something else. Um.
Originally you had tickets, then that became coins. These days
(35:14):
you might have an R F I D ticket. Um.
I think I 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
you put the ticket in or anything. I think it's
just on our system. It was either Switzerland or Sweden.
I think it's Switzerland. And I just remember thinking these
people are crazy, Like, so you just didn't pay a
(35:38):
cent just to teach them a lesson? Yeah, no, I
paid my fare, so chuck, train car, if you are
a 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
(35:59):
through twenty four axles and twenty four motors over the span,
So that'll be two years. You're gonna get gussied up
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.
(36:21):
But um on fast Code design um dot com they
have it's called surreal photos of subway cars being thrown
into the ocean. It is surreal. It's really because you
look at that and you're like, no, how get you? Yeah?
And then oh it's good for the environment somehow, right,
as long as they take the gas out first in
(36:41):
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
over one to three over five thousand square feet of
shop space. We just counted that fast. I just you know,
(37:03):
five what was it kind of each square foot? Um?
And this is where everything goes to get worked one
in New York. Everything they can even work on regular trains. UM.
They can store eighteen hundred subway cars there and they
have a car wash that UM Subway car wash. It
(37:28):
cleans the exteriors of over one thousand cars once a week,
and that's fifty thousand washes in a year. 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
(37:49):
Coney Island still all Avenue in Brooklyn and Astoria did
miz Bolevard and Queens So in other words, 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 delays caused by
(38:10):
mechanical breakdowns, cleanliness, and announcements UM. Whether or not the
announcements like or even something you can hear 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
(38:35):
we should know this. I would think conductor, ticket taker,
ticket taker. Uh. And then New York ranks number seven
and ridership in the world. Tokyo was first, Moscow, Beijing, Shanghai,
soul Ah Quangs. How where's that China is it? I
(38:55):
would imagine, Well, I mean that's a Chinese word. I
just haven't heard of a Paris, Mexico city in Hong Kong.
London is not even in the top ten, and that's
the number one. Um. But you know why, because World
War two happened and everybody got cars afterwards. Yeah, that's true,
and a lot of subway lines just kind of fell
(39:16):
into disrepair, and like a whole generation was raised without
really using subways. Yeah, and black cabs are so roomy
and private. But not 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
(39:37):
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 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 else
(40:01):
and in total, New York's four d and sixty eight
stations are only sixty fewer than the rest of the
subway systems in the United States combined. Wow, pretty cool.
That's my favorite for sure. 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.
(40:22):
That's it, I thought for sure or something. Now just
New York to Chicago. Yeah, I'm a little disappointed in
the lowest station. If you've ever felt a little weird
is a hundred ninety first Street in Manhattan. That's because
you are hundred and eighty feet below ground. Crazy. Probably
shift it ran into a shift problem, the ready to
(40:44):
go down. You should tell people what that is. Well,
it's very hard rock. It's a metamorphic rock. It sends
the flake rather than break, 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
(41:06):
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 the E are doing pretty well.
And the Sea is like the ugly step child where
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
(41:27):
go into Brooklyn. I don't think so is it the
L train. I don't remember you know more than I.
I just I missed 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, and I don't
they look like regular locomotives. To me, I like my
(41:48):
subways to look like subways. Trains should look like trains.
Smells like poop gum, Apparently in New York the gum
is so bad and some that you can lose your shoe.
I can see that you can actually get mired in
the gum. Um 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
(42:13):
fine ending. If you want to learn more about subway
etiquette and the tunnel boring 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, uh, search bar, it's time for
listening to them. Uh. This one was an anniversary of
(42:37):
um two two young people in love. 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
(42:59):
thing is like abandoned cities, blood pressure, 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
(43:20):
up winning me over. Not long ago, I 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. Young
love so sweet like that sweet and terrible for your ardors. Uh.
(43:42):
From time to time, I'll make 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 at agitated whenever I mentioned that Chuck has a
sexy voice. I can't to see him like throwing his
pancakes and open around the apartment. Josh is sexy And
(44:05):
that is from Monique 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 brought you
in a loved one together or it strange to you
(44:25):
from your family, 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 m
Happy Friday afternoon, everybody. This is Chuck here with this
week's Stuff you Should Know selects, Select Sean. It's called subways, Colin, Huh,
what are they good for? I can't remember if I
came up with that silly fun name or if Josh did. Uh.
I think it was me, But at any rate, this
(00:21):
is from septem two thousand twelve, and this is just
a great episode. It's just a classic stuff you should know. Um.
I'm fascinated by subways and we kind of hit on
all cylinders on this one, from the creation, invention, and
history of subways to how they're built today. They're just
really a pretty remarkable form of transportation and you should
(00:44):
know more about it. So enjoy subways. Huh what are
they good for? Right now, welcome to Stuff you Should
Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to
(01:06):
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bright. Uh,
just sitting there normally right. Yeah, I'm not doing anything unusually.
I think we should have 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?
(01:28):
How we how we are we? Train to find the
quickest way to get long. Um we 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,
(01:51):
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 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
(02:13):
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? That? You're right? Okay, let's
go with Duke Ellington's version. Duke Ellington did the A
(02:35):
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 a 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 for ABC Go, our first little opportunity there,
(02:57):
and we were going to meet you me. Oh yeah,
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 at the subway and um, the the
(03:19):
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 I turned. 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 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
(03:42):
was what's going on? I think it is. I think
if you guys had thrown me in and be like
you figured 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 confusing. So when you go
to New York, you just kind of like just go
with Umi's wind wherever she blows kind of but the
wind is coming from her heavy size. That she's the
(04:04):
one who has to like read the subway map. Yeah. Um,
But now that I've read this article how subways work,
I don't understand the New York subway system any more
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
(04:24):
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
I guess there's different cages, but there is. The New
York subway system was designed so that you could just
kind of if you wanted to, like go to Cleveland
(04:48):
on a subway train, you could, Yeah, that's I was designed. Yeah,
they could put it on just a regular railway track
and go to Cleveland. And then you get to Cleveland
and go, jeez, 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.
It's where my home away from home is now. Oh yeah,
(05:11):
so it was. Now they're an acron, but 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 hour or so. I always thought Acro
was more towards Dayton. Yeah, alright, so Dayton, let's talk
about it, all right, let's talk about subways. The Metro
(05:32):
and France. Five hundred forty seven yards every five forty
seven yards, you're gonna find a subway station that's pretty good. No,
not even there. There's no building in Paris that's more
than five A botch that one. No, but it really
you helped build up the drama. Okay, Um, the Tube
(05:55):
in London, mind the gap everyone, Um, two hundred and
seventy five stations and our dear beloved New York subway
system four D and sixty eight as of now packed
into like two hundred and sixty square miles, 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
(06:15):
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,
he's got 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 the London Underground is the oldest open in eighteen
(06:40):
sixty three, The Metro was next in nine hundred, and
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, 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 are outing farming and and they're like, screw this,
(07:03):
I need a decent egg roll. Ye, 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 because there weren't factories. Part of the Industrial
Revolution was the rise of factories, everybody threw down their
grarian tools like scithes, forget this, how I'm out of
here right right? Clever word play, thank you. Um. And
(07:26):
they moved to the cities. And when they moved to
the cities, all of a sudden there was a lot
of people who 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
(07:47):
these areas Paris London, London first and then Um because
I think it was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution,
and then and then New York. Um said all right,
we need to figure out how to move up 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
(08:09):
Typhoid Merry episode. One horse produces 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 there's probably a
couple of guys pooping on the train, but that attribute
that to the guy on the train. That's not really
(08:29):
the subway. That's true. It is not exhaust as you
as you would call horses poop um, I 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,
(08:50):
that's what that's what a bus. I'm glad you brought
that up people in New York. Tourists in New York.
If you're in New York, you got it all figured out.
But tourist in New York, I would recommend that you
occasionally take a bus trip. Don't be afraid of the
bus like a regular bus or a tourist bus double.
Don't take those. No, a regular bus, you're you're a
(09:10):
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 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
(09:30):
get a nice views of everything you're out out and
about up above ground. And that's just my advice of tours.
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, but you know those are expensive, man. Yeah, yeah,
I mean not one Discovery Channel. When I'm there on
(09:51):
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 I had no idea. So you take the bus
and 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 horse poop? As they said, this
(10:12):
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 it first, right eighteen sixty three is when it opened. Yeah,
god knows when they started construction. Look at someone knows
(10:34):
God besides God. Um and uh, then within forty years,
I guess paris open. There is because it was such
a huge success, and I mean it was just brilliant.
The problem is it was also like planning wise, it
was a brilliant move, but um, construction wise, it like
(10:54):
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, right, um,
and basically through every obstacle that we can create that
we've already created. Yeah, that's a good point. Talk about this.
(11:15):
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 that little reference. Which one. So
this TVM tunnel boring machine um, has discs and scrapers,
(11:37):
crushes rock into into pebbles and sand. It has like
a conveyor belt that comes out the back. So it
is kind of likes it and then dudes get rid
of that stuff and it actually supports the tunnel as
it digs and does 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
(11:59):
in the A they had to do it by hand
and picks, shovel dynamite yeah or TNT, depending on where
your preferences lie. Um. Yeah, 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,
(12:19):
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 mudd and dirt that's just like runoff.
Did you realize that? Yeah, I just recently realized that
I've done that for years. But that bedrock, it's kind
of tough to get through. Yeah. New York City alone,
(12:40):
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. Yeah, I'm
sure it was like sixty a day injured. Do you
think I don't know, thousands of injuries. Let's just say that, Um,
did you look up the New Austrian tunneling method? Did
(13:02):
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 to dig. Yeah, where
to dig and how to dig? Um? So like what
are they like? No, they're not random like that. But
(13:28):
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 I guess that they must be the king
tunnel ers like Charles Bunsen. Is he Austrian? Uh no,
but he was the tunnel or in the Great Escape,
(13:49):
but he was the tunnel expert. Um. So that that's
that was from a reservoir dogs. That was a line.
At one point someone says, he's like Charles Bronson and
Great Escape, he was digging tunnels. How did they miss
that line? I don't know. Well, so you just referenced
the reference of a movie. The method that they use
(14:12):
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 for a couple
of routes. Number one, subways are meant to serve like
areas streets, right, It's basically like a street that happens
(14:32):
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 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
(14:53):
can rebuild 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 him pilings, you drive
them down preferably into 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
(15:15):
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 beings. Frankly, I'm a cut
and cover method guy. Yeah. Well, it also makes sense
because the streets are probably not gonna You're probably not
gonna run into as many obstacles. Um, like a basement
(15:38):
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?
Do you like it a lot um where they're talking
about how Chicago built the first skyscrapers. Yeah, yeah, and um,
basically they figured out how to float the foundations of
(16:01):
the building above the bedrock because the bedrock was really
far down and there was like the sandy shifting soil.
And 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 out so you didn't
even need the murders. I found them superfluous. It was
(16:24):
a good book, and I'm not one for like popular
fiction like that popular semi fiction, historical fiction. Yeah, it's good.
I like it. Um. So we're talking about obstacles, and
that is a big problem when you're when you're digging tunnels,
especially under a city that's already has an infrastructure in place. Um,
(16:44):
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, have you
ever been in a subway, especially New York that really
slows 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
(17:06):
had to reroute it. Um, especially if it's an old
section of the subway. 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 I'm talking more along 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
(17:28):
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. UM.
You can also Like I said, if 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. That's true,
(17:51):
that makes sense. Uh. Sometimes, as Tracy pointed out, you
(18:23):
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 is not great, or
(18:44):
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, right, which
is really the surface of the earth. Um, you can
hit it, quefer. You might have to say across the river,
like the East River. Um. And when you do that,
(19:05):
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 Paris in the
(19:27):
Seine 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.
(19:48):
But the problem was like people 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
(20:08):
as they call it. UM. And the other cool thing
they did in Paris too was 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
(20:30):
timing construction too. I was that 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 and uh, your
pick on that. And I love that. I'm gonna make
your t shirt this is cut and cover. I wouldn't
wear that. It just makes sense to me, Yeah, it does. Um.
(20:53):
You can use 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
(21:13):
out over 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. Yeah, cans quarries very
(21:34):
deep quarries. This is kind of cool. I thought this
was very cool. 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
like cool stuff like that, um, like abandoned subway stations. Yeah,
(21:59):
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 a little trick, chuck
(22:20):
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 abandoned um metro stop
(22:43):
or m T 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 and they used to make everybody
get off at Brooklyn Bridge, but now they'll let people
stay on and do they y Because I couldn't find
(23:05):
recent information. I saw an article today that said they
did that for a while. A Noo, they're not, and
then I saw another one that said, no, you can. Um,
I wonder if it's just arbitrary, like depending on 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 towards restoration, but they cleaned
it up really nice and allowed like light to come
(23:26):
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 a pretty big gap that people would have
to jump over to get off. So I can imagine
(23:47):
you can't get off, but from what I saw it
was a two article it said you can stay on. Now. Well,
I've been meaning to check that out. I'm 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
what these trains are actually called. And in some cities
the rolling stock is automated, like Denmark. The one they're
(24:11):
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
computerized what no, what they do and um, they navigate it.
(24:31):
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. In New York, they're
actually trying out some of these now too. Actually yeah,
I didn't see when this article was written, but they were.
They were. Tracy made mention of the um the addition
(24:55):
that's being made to Long Island. Is this going on
still and like just this e vamping 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
trying to spruce up the trains and like you know,
replace the old cars. They're improving the air circulation, which
(25:16):
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. If you've ever been like deep within the
bowels of the subway system, then you might be 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
(25:39):
amount of air to be recirculated to allow humans to
live underground. I think she said something was 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 we talk about some of
the signals, Yeah, train signals. Yeah, so um before a
(26:01):
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 keing buy that they still use, so 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,
(26:23):
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
if you were looking and you're up front, you could
probably see him and to have the drive around the
shoulder and be like we're going way faster than that. Yeah.
(26:45):
I mean Marta 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
right now. Yeah. Yeah, dude. It's just like it's got
a little forward lever and a neutral and a reverse
(27:05):
and a break and then that's pretty much it. Yeah,
I could go do it right now. You can drive
it through arms costs, 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,
and they all look like a play a spaghetti And
then it's Atlanta with its little plus sign plus sign
(27:26):
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 its 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
work in progress. No, they've added some stuff since. Yeah,
a little bit, but really it's pretty bad. It does
(27:48):
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. 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
for me. I'm like Falcon's game day, you know, hop
(28:09):
right down the street, hop on there, my brown bag,
hop off them right at the stadium. Yeah, it's nice.
You're brown bag, so you know for hyperventilation right in
case something bad goes down in case the six hundred
thousand cubic leaders of errors that moved through that most
of Atlanta is above groundway. Really, that's what I'm saying.
(28:29):
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 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, so it'll get you. It'll fry
(28:53):
a rap. They're not kidding. 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 to run the subway
(29:13):
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. All right. I think the
(29:58):
fact of the podcast, I'll 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 to buy. Yeah, well, or I've dreamt one. Uh yeah,
this one in the diagrams like full of computers and people.
(30:22):
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 people. Yes, all this stuff is going to
(30:44):
basically pull your tracks 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, say you're so fond of and uh. It
basically just goes down the track every track. And these
(31:06):
things are running like twenty four hours a day, seven
days a week. Um. Yeah, the one in New York
runs at all times and uh, and you would think
it would have to I wonder how long it takes
for a geometry train to hit every 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
(31:26):
of the tracks, and anything that's over one point to
five inches out of alignment, there's a report that's filed
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 near the track that could uh
combusta whether it's like a Derrito's bag, a cool ranch
(31:50):
Derrito's bag, Uh, any kind of Derrito's bag. Well, the
dude probably already toast. Anyway, he's on the third rail,
he is, And uh, that's a good reference for our
spontaneous combustion podcasts. In New York City and in many cities,
the fair does not cover the costs of running this
massive system about half yeah in New York. So um,
(32:13):
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
the subways and at least the tunnels over the years
(32:36):
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 cover against air raids um in
the subways. And but world War one it was like
(32:57):
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,
but that's ground based, that's those are mortars. Yeah. Well, yeah,
(33:19):
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 if
you want to get technical. But yes, world War two
for sure, Yes, during the blitz um of London. There
are a lot of people underground in the tube seeking
help and shelter. That's right, as are the mold people. Um,
(33:42):
if you haven't seen the documentary Dark Days highly recommended,
is that about the mold people? Or this is like
the there's a it's a group of homeless people. They
don't identify themselves as mold. Mold people is one of
those terms that you know, the people above ground made up? Uh,
somewhat sensational. But there are people live underground. Some I
haven't been up in a long long time. In this
(34:03):
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 everybody
lost appointment after that, so I need to get back
above ground. Um. And then everyone remembers the Tokyo sarin
gas episode killed twelve people. Sure that was incredibly frightening, Um,
(34:28):
London thousand and five seven seven it was July. Oh yeah,
was that significant or no? That's just how they refer
to it, like we referred to nine eleven is nine
eleven seven interesting? And then in our own nine eleven Um,
it destroyed subway station and damaged some of the track.
(34:50):
I think we talked about that in the UM nine
eleven memorial episode. I think you're right, and 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, I can't wait
to go to that. It's going to be something else. Um.
Originally you had tickets, then that became coins. These days
(35:14):
you might have an R F I D ticket. Um.
I think I 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
you put the ticket in or anything. I think it's
just on our system. It was either Switzerland or Sweden.
I think it's Switzerland. And I just remember thinking these
people are crazy, Like, so you just didn't pay a
(35:38):
cent just to teach them a lesson? Yeah, no, I
paid my fare, so chuck, train car, if you are
a 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
(35:59):
through twenty four axles and twenty four motors over the span,
So that'll be two years. You're gonna get gussied up
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.
(36:21):
But um on fast Code design um dot com they
have it's called surreal photos of subway cars being thrown
into the ocean. It is surreal. It's really because you
look at that and you're like, no, how get you? Yeah?
And then oh it's good for the environment somehow, right,
as long as they take the gas out first in
(36:41):
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
over one to three over five thousand square feet of
shop space. We just counted that fast. I just you know,
(37:03):
five what was it kind of each square foot? Um?
And this is where everything goes to get worked one
in New York. Everything they can even work on regular trains. UM.
They can store eighteen hundred subway cars there and they
have a car wash that UM Subway car wash. It
(37:28):
cleans the exteriors of over one thousand cars once a week,
and that's fifty thousand washes in a year. 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
(37:49):
Coney Island still all Avenue in Brooklyn and Astoria did
miz Bolevard and Queens So in other words, 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 delays caused by
(38:10):
mechanical breakdowns, cleanliness, and announcements UM. Whether or not the
announcements like or even something you can hear 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
(38:35):
we should know this. I would think conductor, ticket taker,
ticket taker. Uh. And then New York ranks number seven
and ridership in the world. Tokyo was first, Moscow, Beijing, Shanghai,
soul Ah Quangs. How where's that China is it? I
(38:55):
would imagine, Well, I mean that's a Chinese word. I
just haven't heard of a Paris, Mexico city in Hong Kong.
London is not even in the top ten, and that's
the number one. Um. But you know why, because World
War two happened and everybody got cars afterwards. Yeah, that's true,
and a lot of subway lines just kind of fell
(39:16):
into disrepair, and like a whole generation was raised without
really using subways. Yeah, and black cabs are so roomy
and private. But not 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
(39:37):
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 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 else
(40:01):
and in total, New York's four d and sixty eight
stations are only sixty fewer than the rest of the
subway systems in the United States combined. Wow, pretty cool.
That's my favorite for sure. 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.
(40:22):
That's it, I thought for sure or something. Now just
New York to Chicago. Yeah, I'm a little disappointed in
the lowest station. If you've ever felt a little weird
is a hundred ninety first Street in Manhattan. That's because
you are hundred and eighty feet below ground. Crazy. Probably
shift it ran into a shift problem, the ready to
(40:44):
go down. You should tell people what that is. Well,
it's very hard rock. It's a metamorphic rock. It sends
the flake rather than break, 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
(41:06):
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 the E are doing pretty well.
And the Sea is like the ugly step child where
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
(41:27):
go into Brooklyn. I don't think so is it the
L train. I don't remember you know more than I.
I just I missed 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, and I don't
they look like regular locomotives. To me, I like my
(41:48):
subways to look like subways. Trains should look like trains.
Smells like poop gum, Apparently in New York the gum
is so bad and some that you can lose your shoe.
I can see that you can actually get mired in
the gum. Um 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
(42:13):
fine ending. If you want to learn more about subway
etiquette and the tunnel boring 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, uh, search bar, it's time for
listening to them. Uh. This one was an anniversary of
(42:37):
um two two young people in love. 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
(42:59):
thing is like abandoned cities, blood pressure, 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
(43:20):
up winning me over. Not long ago, I 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. Young
love so sweet like that sweet and terrible for your ardors. Uh.
(43:42):
From time to time, I'll make 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 at agitated whenever I mentioned that Chuck has a
sexy voice. I can't to see him like throwing his
pancakes and open around the apartment. Josh is sexy And
(44:05):
that is from Monique 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 brought you
in a loved one together or it strange to you
(44:25):
from your family, 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
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Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.