Speaker 1: Get in Touch with Technology with tex Stuff from Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to episode seven hundred of Tech Stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. Joining me in the studio is Ben bo. Hey, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: I just want to let you know that I meant
Speaker 1: to rent that tux that I'm always talking about renting
Speaker 1: for this show. This is huge, seven hundred episodes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do appreciate the fact that you have filled the
Speaker 1: entire audio podcast studio room with confetti at waste height. Yeah,
Speaker 1: was it confetti or money that you wanted? I didn't
Speaker 1: read the end of the email. You know, it looks
Speaker 1: like you actually got this confetti from the Department of Treasury,
Speaker 1: because it does look like you've got shredded I assume
Speaker 1: you got it from there because you can get shredded
Speaker 1: money from them. Yeah. I'm gonna hope that that's in
Speaker 1: fact where this is from. But it it's very festive.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Hey, thank you. You know, because we
Speaker 1: live in an urban environment, we have all kinds of
Speaker 1: cool stuff in our city, Like we do have a
Speaker 1: federal ment here, right, Yeah, yeah, we have a lot
Speaker 1: of cool things in Atlanta. In fact, we could do
Speaker 1: a full episode just on the neat stuff in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: And now that I'm saying that, I'm kind of regretting
Speaker 1: that I didn't think about it beforehand. But the thing
Speaker 1: we decided to go with it was several people have
Speaker 1: requested over the years of tech stuff that we cover
Speaker 1: how subways work. Uh not the sandwich shop, not subway.
Speaker 1: Thank you for correcting me before we went on air. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was an incident beforehand, but we won't speak of it,
Speaker 1: and instead we're going to talk about subway systems like
Speaker 1: subway trains because it's a fascinating topic. The technology is
Speaker 1: very married from really super simple stuff in the early
Speaker 1: early days of subways too pretty sophisticated systems to today
Speaker 1: and today. Um. Now, to understand subways, we have to
Speaker 1: understand what was the need for a subway. What is
Speaker 1: the story of how subways became a necessity? And it
Speaker 1: all starts back in the mid nineteenth century when we
Speaker 1: start seeing this incredible move people moving from pastoral areas
Speaker 1: to urban areas to cities as the opportunities for jobs
Speaker 1: and to make money increased in cities and decreased out
Speaker 1: in farmland areas. So industrial revolution is a big part
Speaker 1: of this, right yeah, absolutely. And one of the one
Speaker 1: of the strange things is that for a lot of
Speaker 1: the people moving into these urban areas and for the
Speaker 1: people who were, you know, the functioning government of these
Speaker 1: urban area is nobody was quite sure how to city. Really,
Speaker 1: these were built on these medieval medieval if I'm pronouncing correctly,
Speaker 1: I butchered at both times. But they're they're built on
Speaker 1: these much older plans, narrow lanes, you know, the ditch
Speaker 1: going through the center of the road, and they were
Speaker 1: not equipped to handle all these pedestrians, let alone the carts.
Speaker 1: You you and I were calling this the bs era
Speaker 1: for before subways, but we we have to paint a
Speaker 1: picture for this. And and you have some um specific
Speaker 1: statistics too about uh, the just the sheer growth. Right.
Speaker 1: So imagine, if you will. You've got this urban environment
Speaker 1: that that Ben was describing. You've got these narrow roads,
Speaker 1: You've got the ditch that's in the middle. You've got
Speaker 1: traffic that's pedestrian and horse traffic, cart traffic, wagons, that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff all going in these cities. We're gonna
Speaker 1: focus largely on London here because London, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: is the first city to incorporate a subterranean training system.
Speaker 1: Uh so London in the in eight hundred, London was
Speaker 1: already the world's largest city at that time, and it
Speaker 1: had one million people fifty years later, So just five
Speaker 1: decades later it went from one million to two point
Speaker 1: five million people. That's explosive growth in a relatively short
Speaker 1: amount of time. Yeah, it's an extra London and a half. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and imagine if you will what this does with population density,
Speaker 1: with traffic. I mean, you had, uh issues with housing.
Speaker 1: It was it was hard to get good housing in London.
Speaker 1: Not not that that's you know, that's totally different. Now
Speaker 1: if you are incredibly wealthy, it's not hard, I guess,
Speaker 1: to get good housing in London, but otherwise it can
Speaker 1: be a bit of a challenge. So one of the
Speaker 1: things that governments wanted to do was in aspire people
Speaker 1: to still live further outside of the city where they
Speaker 1: could have a much better living condition and then be
Speaker 1: able to come into the city to work and then
Speaker 1: leave the city to go back home to commute. Right
Speaker 1: So that way they wouldn't be forced to live in
Speaker 1: tiny conditions or in slums. Yeah, exactly, they wanted to
Speaker 1: you know, that's no way for a person to live.
Speaker 1: And now we understand that all the jobs are here,
Speaker 1: so we don't want to deny them the access to
Speaker 1: the jobs. And we need people to do yeah, but
Speaker 1: we don't need them to be living in human conditions. Right.
Speaker 1: And also that's that's dangerous for the city overall, when
Speaker 1: you go to crime, when you go to sanitation. Uh.
Speaker 1: But it's it's no secret and I don't think this
Speaker 1: is an offensive thing to say, nor spoiler. It's no
Speaker 1: secret that parts of London were pretty rough. So these
Speaker 1: people who had, you know, had jobs, not necessarily um,
Speaker 1: very high dollar jobs. Right. The equivalent middle class would
Speaker 1: be would ride steam railways, right, coal power rail Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the coal was there to generate the heat that
Speaker 1: would convert water to steam. The steam would actually power
Speaker 1: the train, but you're using coal as the main fuel
Speaker 1: to to start the steam in the first place. It's
Speaker 1: not like steam just happens on its own. You gotta
Speaker 1: heat it up first, heat water up first. So there
Speaker 1: were railways that existed in England and they had stations
Speaker 1: that terminated on the outskirts what were then the outskirts
Speaker 1: of London. But city city officials had passed laws that
Speaker 1: that restricted those railways from going any further into the
Speaker 1: city because there just wasn't room. There wasn't room for
Speaker 1: a train to come in further into London than on
Speaker 1: the outskirts. So your big stations at the time were Paddington,
Speaker 1: it was a Houston was another one, and King's Cross.
Speaker 1: Those were the three big ones. So you could have
Speaker 1: people ride in to those points from further out in
Speaker 1: the countryside, but once they got there, they still had
Speaker 1: to make their way further into London to work wherever
Speaker 1: they were working, which meant that traffic was still nightmarish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is pedestrian traffic, so much of it, which
Speaker 1: to me is even more undesirable than being stuck in
Speaker 1: a car uh or on a horse I guess I've
Speaker 1: never been in a horse jam, but but just being
Speaker 1: in this constant crowd because more than seven hundred thousand
Speaker 1: people every day rode the train to the edge of
Speaker 1: the city and then somehow got to work right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which makes my own commuting stories, like the war stories
Speaker 1: I used to tell, seem pretty fail in comparison. You
Speaker 1: have some pretty good wines, though, I do. I mean
Speaker 1: I used to have to. I had a commute that
Speaker 1: was three hours a day for a while, that was
Speaker 1: you know, total commute from but the commute in and
Speaker 1: the commune it was three hours total. That was it's
Speaker 1: a significant chunk of your day just spent getting to
Speaker 1: and from your your your job. But there were other
Speaker 1: forms of mass trendsit before the subway and beyond the
Speaker 1: train systems. There were omnibuses. Now, the original omnibusses were
Speaker 1: not motor vehicles. They were horse drawn wagons essentially. Some
Speaker 1: of them, like you could some of them were like
Speaker 1: double decker type things like the old double decker buses,
Speaker 1: except a cart drawn by horse. If you ever see
Speaker 1: any of the old footage, like there are old films
Speaker 1: that show some of the traffic in cities like London
Speaker 1: that when when there's still were quite a few horses,
Speaker 1: Like there were some cars by that time, but there
Speaker 1: were still a lot of horse traffic. To see the
Speaker 1: omnibusses being pulled, it looks terrifying to me, like these
Speaker 1: things looked like they would flip over. I get sneezed wrong,
Speaker 1: and people are just packed in them like they're they're
Speaker 1: sitting shoulder to shoulder, and I'm just thinking, boy, the
Speaker 1: poor horses too. I mean, it's gotta be tough. And
Speaker 1: there were those also created even more traffic. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not like it's not like that solved a lot
Speaker 1: of problems. Plus where do you put them when you're
Speaker 1: not using them? You've gotta have a place to park
Speaker 1: these things right, right, they're not they're not small. You
Speaker 1: can't really parallel park in omnibus and it's got to
Speaker 1: be a pain even with just a single horse, especially
Speaker 1: if you have crime. No cars of course came in
Speaker 1: everybody who has to pay the various uh traffic usage
Speaker 1: taxes in London currently uh probably probably as a couple
Speaker 1: of regrets about their cars. Cars. Cars, Honestly, even though
Speaker 1: they came after subways and of course after horses, they
Speaker 1: had their own set of similar problems. Most importantly, where
Speaker 1: do I put it? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, if you are
Speaker 1: if you are living in a city that's built on
Speaker 1: a medieval city plan, at least parts of the city
Speaker 1: are that way, there probably aren't that many places where
Speaker 1: you could put a car, right, you know, And then
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of like New York City to there
Speaker 1: there are parking areas in New York City. They're like
Speaker 1: parking garages and parking decks and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But street parking is one of those things that people
Speaker 1: just guard jealously. Oh yeah, the whole story about you
Speaker 1: circle a block sixty times waiting for a spot to
Speaker 1: open up so that way you don't have to walk
Speaker 1: an extra fift or whatever. And there there's still people
Speaker 1: who who just uh, stay in a parking space and
Speaker 1: wait until the cleaners come, the street cleaners, and just
Speaker 1: move it for the street cleaners and then park back
Speaker 1: because it's that valuable. It's it's crazy and one of
Speaker 1: one of the things when these cars didn't um really
Speaker 1: solve them many problems, Like the railways can only do
Speaker 1: so much. The horses weren't helping, although I'm sure they
Speaker 1: you know, we're doing their best. It's because all of
Speaker 1: these forms of transit had one thing in common. They
Speaker 1: were all competing for the same space. They wanted to
Speaker 1: go above ground, right there was no no other means
Speaker 1: of getting around. They didn't have elevated pathways, so you
Speaker 1: couldn't go above the traffic, so that really limited what
Speaker 1: you could do. You know, any solution you had just
Speaker 1: been adding more fuel to the fire right. Uh, and
Speaker 1: so here's some other challenges. Let's say that you've got
Speaker 1: a great design for your city. Let's say that you
Speaker 1: you have planned this out from the beginning. There's certain
Speaker 1: cities that had the benefit of early civil engineering planning
Speaker 1: from the start, Like Salt Lake City is a great example.
Speaker 1: It's laid out in a grid that's very easy to understand.
Speaker 1: It's very easy for you to navigate. Um. There are
Speaker 1: other cities that are laid out in a way that
Speaker 1: defies logic. Atlanta, Georgia, just throwing it out there, we
Speaker 1: don't really have blocks in Atlanta, Georgia. We've got blobs,
Speaker 1: you know, surrounded by one way streets that only direct
Speaker 1: you into some sort of nether region where Cathulu rains
Speaker 1: or something. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have.
Speaker 1: I've been there as well. Right, So in this case,
Speaker 1: you know, how do you if it's been planned out
Speaker 1: really well, you may not be able to make any alterations,
Speaker 1: Like you might be able to make the streets wider
Speaker 1: to allow for a street car, for example, And even
Speaker 1: if you did have a street car, that's still on
Speaker 1: the surface, it's still competing for that same space here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. We can tell you we just had not
Speaker 1: not too long ago, a street car prototype program rolled out,
Speaker 1: literally rolled out, and we've already had multiple incidents of
Speaker 1: accidents right rolled out. I'm sorry, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's my show on car stuff. Right. The the the
Speaker 1: street car is kind of a proof of concept and
Speaker 1: we're and what you're saying is absolutely true. We're seeing, uh,
Speaker 1: a spate of accidents or incidents maybe and luckily there
Speaker 1: haven't been any serious injuries or anything. But it's because
Speaker 1: an entire city of drivers, uh that's normal only in
Speaker 1: that part of town, when they're in a hurry to
Speaker 1: ur from somewhere, is trying to navigate around this thing
Speaker 1: that moves at its own pace, right, and they're not
Speaker 1: familiar with it, and uh, you know, it's it's one
Speaker 1: of those things. It's growing pains. It's one of those things.
Speaker 1: And there there are other arguments about the street car
Speaker 1: we won't go into because they're very hyperlocal and if
Speaker 1: you're not in Atlanta, you're not gonna care. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be weird. But there there's another solution to right,
Speaker 1: not just the street Yeah, there's also the elevated solution
Speaker 1: the elevated trains like the L in Chicago. Um, have
Speaker 1: you ever written the L? I have? I have? I
Speaker 1: love the L. I thought it was amazing. So just
Speaker 1: quick sidebars. So my girlfriend took me to Chicago for
Speaker 1: my birthday and I'm a big old chief skate and
Speaker 1: I didn't want to. Yeah, I don't want to. I
Speaker 1: don't want to do anything. So I just told crab
Speaker 1: apple until you know. We got on the plane and
Speaker 1: hit me, we're really going. And it was so exciting
Speaker 1: to just get on this train because the views are great.
Speaker 1: You can go pretty much anywhere. Uh And and as
Speaker 1: a transit rider in Atlanta, that's not the case right
Speaker 1: at the Atlanta Transit's very very limited. Now. The system
Speaker 1: we have in Atlanta has a series of trains that
Speaker 1: some some sections of the track are above ground, some
Speaker 1: are below ground. Right, Yeah, so ours is kind of
Speaker 1: a hybrid surface and subway system and the and the
Speaker 1: But the elevated thing, as as great as it can be,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna work for every city. Right You you
Speaker 1: still have to build supports for that elevated system. Right,
Speaker 1: you have to be able to secure the bridge that
Speaker 1: the tracks are onto something whether it's pylons or two
Speaker 1: buildings or whatever, and that solution works in some situations
Speaker 1: but not in others. So you've pretty much exhausted all
Speaker 1: your other opportunities. The only thing left to you is
Speaker 1: to go down below street level so that you're no
Speaker 1: longer competing for that landscape and you can just get
Speaker 1: people to and from locations underground. Thus they're not impacting
Speaker 1: traffic at all. You can actually help alleviate traffic by
Speaker 1: encouraging a lot of people to go underground as opposed
Speaker 1: to cluttering up the streets. So sounds well, it sounds
Speaker 1: like it's a logical solution, but then it also sounds
Speaker 1: like it's an incredibly difficult one to do. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: for numerous reasons. I mean the cost alone, not just
Speaker 1: not just the cost of the actual materials and labor
Speaker 1: to create this, but the cost to the city from
Speaker 1: lost business activity. There's actually also human cost. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are there are incidents where during the the excavation
Speaker 1: of various tunnels, Uh do there might be an accident?
Speaker 1: You know? I think for the New York City subway system,
Speaker 1: there were several incidents of people who lost their lives
Speaker 1: and tragic accidents. It's one of those deals where this
Speaker 1: is a giant undertaking, it is filled with risk, particularly
Speaker 1: whenever you are digging new or a body of water.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously in London it would have been the
Speaker 1: Thames River as well as the Fleet River. Um, those
Speaker 1: were both big concerns. In fact, there's an interesting thing
Speaker 1: about the Fleet River. I'll talk about that when we
Speaker 1: get a little further in where they had a clever
Speaker 1: way of getting around that spoilers. Yet I think people
Speaker 1: will enjoy that when du The cool thing though, is that,
Speaker 1: to paraphrase this quote I'm stealing from somebody. Uh, necessity
Speaker 1: is the mother of subways. So now we're going to
Speaker 1: turn our focus specifically on London. Londinium as a as
Speaker 1: as the character from the I T. Crowd would call
Speaker 1: it again, the largest city in the world in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century, and they had these restrictions. They couldn't
Speaker 1: allow the railroads to go any further into the city,
Speaker 1: and they had to figure out how were they going
Speaker 1: to alleviate this massive amount of traffic and this influx
Speaker 1: of people that we're living in increasingly poor conditions. Uh
Speaker 1: So this was when I say people by the way,
Speaker 1: I should point out that I'm really talking about the
Speaker 1: middle class, and and the stories that you'll hear are
Speaker 1: grim in many ways because people in the lower classes
Speaker 1: were really not cared for or thought about or taking
Speaker 1: care of. They were essentially the victims of progress in
Speaker 1: this case, which is a tragic and common tale. Right
Speaker 1: whenever you get to this thing where we're making improvements
Speaker 1: to the city, it benefits a certain part of the population,
Speaker 1: and other parts of the population are essentially forced out,
Speaker 1: and that's a tragic part. It is, however, something that
Speaker 1: I wanted to acknowledge because I think those people obviously
Speaker 1: should not be forgotten or a gloss over. Now, to
Speaker 1: be fair, a lot of them were also the criminal
Speaker 1: element of London. Well sure, yeah, you know that's there
Speaker 1: are a thousand ways to analyze that, but it is
Speaker 1: a fact, and it could be you could argue, and
Speaker 1: I think convincingly argue that they were largely the criminal
Speaker 1: element because their conditions meant that they could not get
Speaker 1: work in a legal sense, so they were kind of
Speaker 1: their hand was forced. You know, you still have to
Speaker 1: make a living somehow, you have to. You have to survive.
Speaker 1: So we could go down on a long rabbit hole
Speaker 1: a Dickensie and rabbit hole and talk about this, but
Speaker 1: we'll we'll just leave it at that. So you get
Speaker 1: a guy named Charles Pearson, our hero of the story. Yes,
Speaker 1: he's a London solicitor that means lawyer to you and me. Uh,
Speaker 1: And he argued that London should allow essentially located train
Speaker 1: station to allow people to commute into the city without
Speaker 1: clogging it up. So he was His first idea was,
Speaker 1: let's extend the railways that already terminate at the a
Speaker 1: perimeter of London then perimeter of London and allow them
Speaker 1: to come further end. And the city said, no, we
Speaker 1: can't do that. There's just not space. It's not feasible.
Speaker 1: Stop asking. We can't even a horse in this thing,
Speaker 1: right right you you're barking up the wrong tree. So
Speaker 1: that's when he said, well, what if instead of that
Speaker 1: we end up looking at a subterranean train system. And
Speaker 1: he goes around and talks to some rich friends of his,
Speaker 1: and his rich friends ce Pearson as someone who has
Speaker 1: a pretty radical but potentially lucrative idea, because seven thousand
Speaker 1: people community every day, if you can charge those people
Speaker 1: even a small amount to take a subterranean train station
Speaker 1: system so they can get to their jobs. You have
Speaker 1: revenue just pouring in, so the investors say, you know,
Speaker 1: this risk is worth it. We're going to put our
Speaker 1: money together. So here's one thing that I thought was
Speaker 1: really cool that I did not realize before we started
Speaker 1: researching that the underground the tube in London started out
Speaker 1: as a private enterprise. It was not a government funded thing.
Speaker 1: And especially when you think of England, we think of
Speaker 1: a lot of government funded programs, much more socialist style economy. Um,
Speaker 1: it's not pure socialism, obviously, they're only their elements that
Speaker 1: are very socialist. And you would think, oh, well, the
Speaker 1: subway system must have been one of us. No, it
Speaker 1: was a private enterprise, and in fact it would become
Speaker 1: a competitive private enterprise. So uh, the decision to go
Speaker 1: ahead was made, and so how would they move forward? Well,
Speaker 1: they started looking at what the various techniques would be
Speaker 1: to actually create this underground system. Because all right, they've
Speaker 1: decided they're gonna build these tunnels. They clearly didn't have
Speaker 1: the magic tunneling machine like. It wasn't like the League
Speaker 1: of Extraordinary Gentleman where some jewels verned hie device comes
Speaker 1: up with a nose cone as threads on it, and
Speaker 1: it just drills down and lays down track behind it.
Speaker 1: That's not how it worked. So let's talk about the
Speaker 1: technique they use to build a tunnel. Okay, well all right, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it. This is crazy. Put your put your
Speaker 1: mind back in the in the body in the context
Speaker 1: of someone in eighteen sixty and and picture you're hanging
Speaker 1: out with the rest of your mover and shaker friends.
Speaker 1: You know, some aristocrats there and they're talking about putting
Speaker 1: people in the ground in a moving vehicle. This is bizarre.
Speaker 1: So they started out in they started out kind of
Speaker 1: creating a new level of surface. Um, because they dug
Speaker 1: a big trench and you know, like maybe twenty ft
Speaker 1: across in an existing road. Then they would lay two
Speaker 1: tracks side by side and they would cover that over
Speaker 1: with brick. So it's kind of like they were raising
Speaker 1: the surface a little bit. And they only put This
Speaker 1: wasn't perfect. They called it cut and cover. Um it was.
Speaker 1: It was a massive paint. We're a family show, so
Speaker 1: it's a massive paint. And the key star for all
Speaker 1: this construction. Um, Like, were you ever around during the
Speaker 1: big dig days? Did you ever go to Boston? Oh,
Speaker 1: I I went to Boston when they were not during
Speaker 1: the Big dig it was after that, but it was
Speaker 1: I was in Boston when there were still some fallout
Speaker 1: from Big dig It. It's crazy to stop a city
Speaker 1: like that. And uh so, um there there's some interesting
Speaker 1: statistics here about just how much of a problem all
Speaker 1: of this construction. Sorry, because they didn't start with just
Speaker 1: like one tunnel. They did a network of them. Uh
Speaker 1: and they and they said, what we're going to do
Speaker 1: is build something that connects these rail stations like king Cross,
Speaker 1: King's Cross excuse me, to a more central location called Farrington. Yes,
Speaker 1: Barrington was the first underground station to station on the
Speaker 1: London Underground and so it connected to these other various
Speaker 1: rail stations. So this was like the centralized point and
Speaker 1: people would have to pay a ticket. They first they
Speaker 1: had to pay a ticket to ride whatever rail line
Speaker 1: they were on. They had to pay an extra ticket
Speaker 1: to get on the underground to get into London. But
Speaker 1: if that's your your options so that you can get
Speaker 1: to work without spending six hours behind the horses butt,
Speaker 1: you're gonna you're gonna pay that money if you can.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, because come on, time is money.
Speaker 1: So this cut and cover method meant that whenever they
Speaker 1: were installing the rail lines, that entire street was off limits.
Speaker 1: You could not go down that street as at least
Speaker 1: not in a in any kind of vehicle. You might
Speaker 1: be able to walk along the very sides of it,
Speaker 1: but it meant that it was incredibly disruptive to businesses
Speaker 1: to homes. Whenever the tunnel was being built along that
Speaker 1: particular stretch of the street, and they would build up
Speaker 1: this this this framework around the trench they had made.
Speaker 1: That's where they would break it up so that it
Speaker 1: would become an enclosed tunnel. And it actually reminds me
Speaker 1: a little bit of the way disney World was built.
Speaker 1: Because at disney World, uh, they wanted to make an
Speaker 1: underground system. They call it the Utilo doors the utility corridors.
Speaker 1: But the problem with the Disney World is that it's
Speaker 1: in Florida. And by that I mean in Florida, your
Speaker 1: water table is really close to the service of the ground.
Speaker 1: You can't dig very deep before you hit water. So
Speaker 1: instead of digging down, what they did was they built
Speaker 1: the Utilo doors. Then they dumped ground on top of
Speaker 1: the utilodors and effectively built the ground up. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of like that. It's not quite as extenct as
Speaker 1: as extreme as that, because they did dig trenches. But
Speaker 1: in general these trains were just a you meters below
Speaker 1: the service of the street. The very early ones were um.
Speaker 1: And you were saying that it was a massive pain
Speaker 1: in the key star. That's putting it lightly. More than
Speaker 1: twelve thousand people were displaced from their homes during the
Speaker 1: construction of the Farrington station. Those were twelve thousand people
Speaker 1: who were in that low low class in London. So
Speaker 1: some people, like the middle class largely considered a positive
Speaker 1: thing because they thought about cleaning out London a little gentrification. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they emptied out the slums, right, they got rid of
Speaker 1: the undesirable. Clearly, if you were one of those said undesirables,
Speaker 1: it was not such a pleasant experience. No, no, it
Speaker 1: wasn't a pleasant experience. And and furthermore, Jonathan, even if
Speaker 1: you're on in the middle class people who says, you
Speaker 1: know what, I am done walking with the schmucks and
Speaker 1: the norms. I'm going to ride the train. Then I'm
Speaker 1: gonna pay extra for the underground. Even if you could
Speaker 1: afford to do that. You would find that this was
Speaker 1: not an ideal situation because the same kind of thing
Speaker 1: that they put above the ground is the same, the
Speaker 1: same uh, same steam and smoke burping, uh metal monstrosities
Speaker 1: they put above grounds are the same ones they put underground. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were using steam powered trains. This is before they
Speaker 1: were moving to electric trains. We'll we'll get to that later.
Speaker 1: So again, you're using coal coal fire to heat up
Speaker 1: a boiler so that it generates steam, which is what's
Speaker 1: giving you the ability to create the power needed to
Speaker 1: move a train. Right. So some of the some of
Speaker 1: the steam engine designs they had had steam capturing systems,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't blowing tons of steam into these underground tunnels,
Speaker 1: but you still had coal smoke. Yeah, so did you
Speaker 1: see any pictures of the earliest underground trains. They they
Speaker 1: had uncovered trains like it was a wagon essentially being
Speaker 1: pulled by a steam engine. So you're getting if you're
Speaker 1: worried about not hitting your daily coal smoke in take
Speaker 1: just hop on the train because it would hit you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They actually got to a point where customers were complaining
Speaker 1: about the smell of sulfur and smoke and all the steam,
Speaker 1: to the point where the company that had created this
Speaker 1: underground line did a pr blitz where they talked about
Speaker 1: the beneficial elements of steam and smoke inhalation. I'm not
Speaker 1: making that. They're like, it's good for you, except I'm saying,
Speaker 1: to the British accent, it's jolly well good for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So breathe deeply, enjoy the smooth smell of coal smoke.
Speaker 1: Of course that's not, you know, sustainable, and that's not
Speaker 1: the case today. So so they continued making some improvements,
Speaker 1: right yeah, and the big ones would be at the
Speaker 1: end of the nineteenth century. So in so, while London
Speaker 1: was recovering from the terrible antics of Jack the Ripper,
Speaker 1: the subway system was starting to really come into its own.
Speaker 1: There are two really big things that started to happen
Speaker 1: at this point. One was that they started to dig
Speaker 1: deeper tunnels because they were creating this network of train systems. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind that first rail system that was put
Speaker 1: in was from one company, but other private companies saw
Speaker 1: how successful that was and decided they were going to
Speaker 1: connect other points of London to one another, and they
Speaker 1: just started to dig their own tunnels. So you had
Speaker 1: competing companies making subway lines. Now they weren't linking together necessarily,
Speaker 1: and and the points where they would share a station,
Speaker 1: like you would get this uneasy partnership where they'd be like,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll build a station where your line can
Speaker 1: stop there and our line can stop there. But if
Speaker 1: you're a passenger and you need to switch from one
Speaker 1: line to the other, you have to buy a new
Speaker 1: ticket because one line is operated by one company and
Speaker 1: the other lines operated by another company. So if you're
Speaker 1: on the Piccadilly line and you need to get on
Speaker 1: I wish I knew in the name of another line,
Speaker 1: then you would have to pay extra to switch to
Speaker 1: transfer because they're operated by two different entities. That was
Speaker 1: that was unfortunate. Yeah, But the reason it was so
Speaker 1: possible was because they were able to dig these deeper tunnels.
Speaker 1: And the reason for that actually dates back to the
Speaker 1: early eighteen hundreds, but was an idea that had not
Speaker 1: been been implemented for the subways. It was to use
Speaker 1: a tunneling shield, which was an invention from a guy
Speaker 1: named Mark is Ambard Brunel, French expatriot. Actually, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: he he had come up with this idea, and his
Speaker 1: idea was pretty simple. He's all right, let's let's create
Speaker 1: a cast iron circular or at least a like a
Speaker 1: a thing that would have kind of like an arched
Speaker 1: top shield. All right, So it's it's made off cast iron.
Speaker 1: It's very sturdy, and you put that at the the
Speaker 1: the rock face or the earth face of your tunnel,
Speaker 1: and it has compartments in it that people can be
Speaker 1: inside and they can dig from that point, so it's
Speaker 1: almost like it's a portal, but instead of it leading anywhere,
Speaker 1: there's just earth there. So you get your your miners
Speaker 1: there with hand tools. We're talking shovels, pick axes, that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Um digging away the ground and they
Speaker 1: dig as far as they can uh to kind of
Speaker 1: clear out the space immediately in front of the shield.
Speaker 1: When there's enough space moved out of the way, enough
Speaker 1: earth moved out the way, they could use jack's to
Speaker 1: jack the shield forward into the tunnel until it's pressing
Speaker 1: up against the earth again, and then they would continue. Now,
Speaker 1: the purpose of this was to provide stability in the
Speaker 1: earth as they went lower down, because they're actually digging underground.
Speaker 1: Now they're no longer, digging a trench and then covering
Speaker 1: the trench, digging down and the horizontal exactly. So they
Speaker 1: dig a shaft first and then install this shield and
Speaker 1: start digging their horizontal tunnel. And they needed to make
Speaker 1: sure that the tunnel was going to remain sturdy and
Speaker 1: stable and not collapse in on the minors. So when
Speaker 1: they would move forward, there'd be another team that would
Speaker 1: lay bricks to create stability in the in the area
Speaker 1: that had just been excavated. So it's a very painstaking process.
Speaker 1: Dig dig, dig, remove the spoil as much as possible,
Speaker 1: push forward the shield, laid down the bricks in the
Speaker 1: now new tunnel, and keep on going until you're finished,
Speaker 1: which sounds crazy now. Runelle had come up with this
Speaker 1: while trying to create a tunnel that went across the
Speaker 1: underneath the Thames. Now the Thames divides London. You've got
Speaker 1: a northern section of London in a southern section of London,
Speaker 1: and the Thames runs through, so he wanted to create
Speaker 1: a tom hold that would allow horse traffic to go
Speaker 1: underneath the Thams. So this wasn't meant originally as a subway.
Speaker 1: It was meant as a tunnel for for just regular
Speaker 1: horse drawn carriages and carts and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But what would happen is it would take decades from
Speaker 1: the finish this. By the way, there were a lot
Speaker 1: of problems. There were political issues where funding was ran
Speaker 1: out and then they couldn't get funding for a long time.
Speaker 1: There was a change of politicians, and then he was
Speaker 1: able to get funding again and complete it um and
Speaker 1: finished it sometime in the eighteen forties. It started in
Speaker 1: the eighteen twenties, it finished in the eighteen forties, and
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty five, uh one of the one of
Speaker 1: the underground companies, one of the company's running trains, purchased
Speaker 1: the tunnel and repurposed it for trains running underneath the Thames,
Speaker 1: which very very intelligent move. But they started to actually
Speaker 1: use this very technique to make new subway tunnels like
Speaker 1: subway tunnels on purpose as opposed to converting it. And
Speaker 1: we we should also say that at this point in
Speaker 1: our story, the public is not as adverse to the
Speaker 1: Underground as they were originally. You you can see some
Speaker 1: pretty self assured, uh selfissured people. I mean, history is
Speaker 1: full of people who say, like, well, if the good
Speaker 1: Lord intended us to fly, he would have given us yes,
Speaker 1: or at least some copter device attached directly ours. Right,
Speaker 1: So people were saying that Pearson and then um that
Speaker 1: that later Brunell were essentially kind of quacks for saying
Speaker 1: get put people underground and h Now when we see
Speaker 1: his new tunnels being dug, and we see all this
Speaker 1: intrigue coming and going but not permanently stopping this progress,
Speaker 1: we also see the public u becoming at least diverse. Right,
Speaker 1: And once they were able to demonstrate that this was
Speaker 1: an effective means of getting around London, people took to
Speaker 1: it quickly. So before I go on into the further improvements,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. Let's let's take a look
Speaker 1: at what it must have been like the day that
Speaker 1: the original underground station Farrington opens and how that turned out.
Speaker 1: So it opened on January nine, eighteen sixty three. For context,
Speaker 1: in the United States, that's when the Civil War is
Speaker 1: raging here in the States. So civil wars raging here
Speaker 1: in the States. Meanwhile, in London, the first subterranean train
Speaker 1: station opens. So uh, that first train had those uncovered
Speaker 1: carriages I was talking about, pulled by a steam engine
Speaker 1: powered by coal so not necessarily the most comfortable way,
Speaker 1: but it was incredibly efficient and it was a huge success,
Speaker 1: and manned required the company to increase capacity very quickly,
Speaker 1: Like it wasn't long before they had to have enough
Speaker 1: trains so that one would be arriving every ten minutes, right,
Speaker 1: because this quickly went from being fanciful too indispensable and um,
Speaker 1: and I I love that you're pointing out the larger
Speaker 1: historical context there with the Civil War, because there's a
Speaker 1: tendency we have sometimes when we look at history to
Speaker 1: see each event as occurring in its own isolated timeline,
Speaker 1: like like it like it's all completely here and nothing
Speaker 1: else in the world is going on at that time, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I thought was interesting
Speaker 1: was that on the first day they actually had to
Speaker 1: shut the station down at one point because there were
Speaker 1: too many people who wanted to ride the train. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just a was too crowded. So again, they
Speaker 1: needed to get this capacity up to deal with the demand. Um.
Speaker 1: But that also meant that you had more smoke and
Speaker 1: steam filling up these tunnels because you had more trains
Speaker 1: running through, And that really wrote brought to to people's
Speaker 1: attention that this was not ideal, and they had talked
Speaker 1: about possibly using other methods to move trains through the system,
Speaker 1: including a cable system where the train would actually be
Speaker 1: attached to a cable that would be winched and it
Speaker 1: would pull the train through the system, or pneumatic systems
Speaker 1: or hydraulic systems. But it turned out steam was the
Speaker 1: cheap way, and the cheap way one and the non
Speaker 1: experimental way as well. To remember that, Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a proven methodology for getting people around. And one last
Speaker 1: story I wanted to mention about the opening day. One
Speaker 1: of my favorite bits was that the company invited the
Speaker 1: Prime Minister of England, Henry John Temple, the Vicount Palmerston's.
Speaker 1: So we call him Palmerston because that's the way the
Speaker 1: Brits do, you know, name them by their title. Um.
Speaker 1: He was seventy nine at the time and he was
Speaker 1: invited to ride on the first carriage and his reply
Speaker 1: was that he declined because he said he quote wished
Speaker 1: to remain above ground a little longer end quote. See
Speaker 1: I totally get that. That's that's first off, that's way
Speaker 1: more polite than it needs to be British. It's incredible,
Speaker 1: very dry like he's years old. I wish to remain
Speaker 1: above ground just a little longer. And and for the record,
Speaker 1: I'm sure everybody knows this, but we say that as
Speaker 1: a huge compliment because we love dry humor. Oh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not criticizing. I adore it. So the time we
Speaker 1: get to the nineties, when they're digging these deep holes,
Speaker 1: that's when they hit the other big advance. So the
Speaker 1: deep holes were great because it meant that they could
Speaker 1: actually lay out a lot more track. Obviously, if you
Speaker 1: layout track using the cut and cover method, you can't
Speaker 1: really have a crossing track that way, right, so you
Speaker 1: have to dig underneath in order to do that. The
Speaker 1: deep holes, the deep lines allowed that to happen. The
Speaker 1: other big development that really improved things was the use
Speaker 1: of electrical system so you could use electrical trains. Huge
Speaker 1: difference because now you don't need the smoke, you don't
Speaker 1: have the steam, um and it was an enormous improvement
Speaker 1: in the experience of taking the underground the tube. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was also many times more complicated. Yeah yeah, it
Speaker 1: meant that you had to have a third and fourth rail. Actually,
Speaker 1: with the London one, they had a direct current approach.
Speaker 1: All subways, as far as I am aware, All subways
Speaker 1: that are electrical anyway run on direct current, which has
Speaker 1: its own issues that we'll talk about in a second.
Speaker 1: But they had a third rail in the fourth rail.
Speaker 1: One was essentially the positive rail. One was the negative rail,
Speaker 1: and that's what provided the electricity to the electric cars
Speaker 1: so that they could move through without the need for steam. Um.
Speaker 1: Very important development. And we still have the continuation of
Speaker 1: all these private companies operating these lines. Yeah. Yeah, by
Speaker 1: the way, funny trivia, I'm guessing here, but that's probably
Speaker 1: the etymology of the third rail as a figure of speech, right, yeah, exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it comes from this era. So and then electric trains
Speaker 1: in general, because some ways are one version, but there
Speaker 1: are other electric train systems obviously. And then and then,
Speaker 1: you know, as you were saying, there's this hodgepodge of
Speaker 1: this motley crew, if you will, of different private companies
Speaker 1: that are teaming up or they're not teaming up. And
Speaker 1: historically when we see stuff like that, what it leads
Speaker 1: to will be a great first phase of competition inovation.
Speaker 1: So then you get this incredible outburst of growth throughout
Speaker 1: the city. But the as anybody who has ever tried
Speaker 1: to find the right charger for a cell phone knows. Uh.
Speaker 1: The standards can be different, and eventually that creates enormous problem. Well,
Speaker 1: especially if you wanted to Let's say that you have
Speaker 1: a complicated commute and you need to change trains twice.
Speaker 1: Let's say that would that might mean that you have
Speaker 1: to pay three times once to get on the first train,
Speaker 1: then you change, had to pay again, and you change,
Speaker 1: you had to pay again, and that was not a
Speaker 1: good experience for consumers and people are starting to complain
Speaker 1: about it, and that led to Parliament creating the London Transport,
Speaker 1: which was created in nineteen three. So the purpose of
Speaker 1: the London Transport was to bring all these companies together
Speaker 1: and itself was a public corporation financed by private companies
Speaker 1: that unified the system. So if you bought a ticket
Speaker 1: on one system, it was good for your trip all
Speaker 1: the way through. UH. You know, a lot of subway
Speaker 1: systems are essentially built on that same principle, although many
Speaker 1: of them have kind of a metered approach. UH. In
Speaker 1: in London, they have different zones and if you're traveling
Speaker 1: from one zone to another zone, there may be an
Speaker 1: extra amount that you have to pay in order to
Speaker 1: use the subway system. So the the logic there is
Speaker 1: the further you travel, the more your ticket is going
Speaker 1: to cost, which is not unusual. There are other places
Speaker 1: like Atlanta where it doesn't matter how far you're going,
Speaker 1: you your your ticket is is one specific cost. But
Speaker 1: it also really doesn't matter because it doesn't go that
Speaker 1: many places. Yeah, I like to think of it as
Speaker 1: a working progress man. One thing that they one thing
Speaker 1: that they found as well. Okay, first, I don't want
Speaker 1: to discount that innovation because I know it's not of
Speaker 1: tech thing, but it is more. It is more than
Speaker 1: just the bureaucracy. It may sound like this really made
Speaker 1: made the whole thing a m not an organism, but
Speaker 1: you know, it made it one thing instead of you know,
Speaker 1: eighteen and that meant that they were able to address
Speaker 1: some bigger problems collectively as a unit. Because one of
Speaker 1: the big questions that a lot of you guys are
Speaker 1: probably waiting for us to talk about will be what
Speaker 1: do you find in the ground. I dig a tunnel
Speaker 1: deeper and deeper and deeper. Yeah, so one thing water
Speaker 1: you could find water awkwifers could be a problem where
Speaker 1: you have to figure out, well, how do we deal
Speaker 1: with this, and usually you would have to bring in pumps,
Speaker 1: pump water out until you had gotten a dry system,
Speaker 1: and then you create your tunnel and you seal it
Speaker 1: up as fast as you can so that water can't
Speaker 1: get in. That was a big one also. Well, the
Speaker 1: same things that caused issues for traffic were also issues
Speaker 1: for things like getting water around your city, like supplying
Speaker 1: water to people, or sewer lines to take waste away,
Speaker 1: or electrical conduits to get power to people. As time
Speaker 1: went on and many places would bury these, but that
Speaker 1: means that you have to worry about that when you're
Speaker 1: digging your tunnel, and depending on how old the system is,
Speaker 1: there may not even be records of where these things
Speaker 1: are now, so you had to be really careful when
Speaker 1: you were digging, and you might encounter something that wasn't
Speaker 1: on your plans, like there's a sewer pipe here, I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's still in use. That could be
Speaker 1: a bad thing. It's also another good example. So with
Speaker 1: the case of conduits, sewer lines, water lines, uh either
Speaker 1: you would end up having to excavate around them. That
Speaker 1: was often the most the most logical approach was to
Speaker 1: try and just alter the plan a little bit so
Speaker 1: that you would avoid them, or you could actually incorporate
Speaker 1: them into the design. So some of these had uh
Speaker 1: they would suspend pipes or sewer you know, sewer pipes
Speaker 1: or water pipes or electrical conduits or whatever from the
Speaker 1: ceiling of the tunnel. They would be built in so
Speaker 1: that you would have supports from the ceiling holding these
Speaker 1: in place. Because keep in mind, originally they were buried
Speaker 1: in the ground, they were completely supported by the ground
Speaker 1: below them. So in this case they just replaced the
Speaker 1: ground below them with whatever supports they have and suspended
Speaker 1: from the ceiling. Uh. So there were a couple of
Speaker 1: different options there, and one of the other ones one
Speaker 1: of the other things I thought was really cool. Remember
Speaker 1: I mentioned about the Fleet River and that was going
Speaker 1: to yeah, yeah, so Farrington itself was built on the
Speaker 1: river bed of the Fleet River. That was that was
Speaker 1: where they decided to place this. It made the most
Speaker 1: sense logistically, but then you have the question of what
Speaker 1: the heck do you do with the river? Well, what
Speaker 1: they did was they made pipes, They let the river
Speaker 1: flow into the pipes. They buried the pipes below the
Speaker 1: ground of where the riverbed was, so now the Fleet
Speaker 1: River flowed below the its original riverbed, which is where
Speaker 1: Farrington Station was. This, however, caused issues occasionally. Yeah, whatever
Speaker 1: would rain really hard, the river would overflow and the
Speaker 1: station would start to flood, which in the day is
Speaker 1: of the electric trains, meant that sometimes you had shorts,
Speaker 1: so sensors would start shorting out, and sensors shorting out
Speaker 1: would mean that the whole system would have red lights
Speaker 1: go up, which it tells the drivers they can't go
Speaker 1: any further because there was no longer a reliable means
Speaker 1: of making sure that the track was clear ahead of you,
Speaker 1: so it would require people to actually go out and
Speaker 1: physically check the tracks to try and find the shorts.
Speaker 1: And I watched uh a documentary before we came in here.
Speaker 1: It was it was the Tube and Underground History of London,
Speaker 1: and it was this hour long documentary, really well done.
Speaker 1: And it starts off with this supervisor of the Farrington station.
Speaker 1: And as soon as he gets in, he's, you know,
Speaker 1: he's showing the crew around, he's explaining things. He gets
Speaker 1: a call that says there has been this this problem
Speaker 1: of sensors no longer working and they're all these red lights,
Speaker 1: so you've got to be kidding me. And it goes
Speaker 1: down into the into the tunnels, and he says, oh,
Speaker 1: this is the worst shift of mine bloody life. He's
Speaker 1: walking around checking for these these sensors. And then he
Speaker 1: got back up and explained what I just explained. That
Speaker 1: it was on the bed of the old Fleet River,
Speaker 1: and then the river itself was flowing underneath the station
Speaker 1: and occasionally it would come up on the station level
Speaker 1: because of too much train. That's right for the world's
Speaker 1: first subway system. This London buried the river alive. You
Speaker 1: think about it, I mean, you know, you gotta do
Speaker 1: what you gotta do. And the river really was just
Speaker 1: it was Look, you got a nice rover here, U
Speaker 1: shape someone buried? Uh. So before we before we get
Speaker 1: into uh into too much trouble for our for our
Speaker 1: river jokes, which you and I both have several more. Yes,
Speaker 1: we are dancing around river jokes, river joke dancing. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to take the bay man, but but we
Speaker 1: we we should talk about um the modern era today,
Speaker 1: right right? So your your trains are running on electric
Speaker 1: systems for the most part, New York system uses six
Speaker 1: volts of direct current to power trains. London uses six
Speaker 1: thirty volts of direct current UH and has both the
Speaker 1: third and fourth rail. New York's as just the third
Speaker 1: rail UM, So they're carrying high current but relatively low voltage.
Speaker 1: High voltage would be considered over one volts. So the
Speaker 1: reason why they're it's it's relatively low voltage is to
Speaker 1: minimize the risk of electrocution. Electrocution, of course, means death
Speaker 1: through when you encounter an electrical current with enough voltage
Speaker 1: to kill you. Electrocution like you wouldn't say I got
Speaker 1: electrocuted if you got shocked. Electrocuted means you are no
Speaker 1: longer alive. Is always fatal, Yes, it is by definition,
Speaker 1: So they wanted to make sure that this was safe.
Speaker 1: So they're using direct current, they're using relatively low voltages.
Speaker 1: That meant they had to use high current to push
Speaker 1: the power to the trains and make it an effective
Speaker 1: means for the trains to receive the power they needed
Speaker 1: to operate. It also meant that sins using direct current,
Speaker 1: you had to have lots of different substations throughout the
Speaker 1: system to provide that electricity. Because direct current, the effectiveness
Speaker 1: of direct current decreases as the distance increases between you
Speaker 1: and wherever the electricity is being generated. This was the
Speaker 1: problem Edison ran into when he was advocating for direct
Speaker 1: current to be the standard in the United States. Westinghouses
Speaker 1: argument was, if we go a direct current, Uh, the
Speaker 1: effectiveness of direct current decreases the further the further way
Speaker 1: you placed the load from the point of generation, the
Speaker 1: less effective direct current is. I mean that we would
Speaker 1: have to build power stations every couple of miles, which,
Speaker 1: as you pointed out when we were talking earlier, Edison
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily adverse to. Yeah, he had no problem with that,
Speaker 1: And as you pointed out, Westinghouse, however, it was not
Speaker 1: convinced that lining Edison's pockets with substations was the best right.
Speaker 1: So Westinghouse's argument was to use alternating current, which allows
Speaker 1: you to create transformers where you can step up or
Speaker 1: step down the voltage relatively easily, just using a couple
Speaker 1: of different coils of wire. Uh. That was not that's
Speaker 1: not an option with the trains. They wanted to go
Speaker 1: with direct current. Um. So that's why you have to
Speaker 1: have these electric substations throughout your system, so that the
Speaker 1: power is is uh distributed properly so the trains keep moving.
Speaker 1: So yes, speaking of the trains, what's going on with
Speaker 1: them the lake? How have you ever looked inside the
Speaker 1: the Marta train and seeing the person driving, or looked
Speaker 1: at the controls that they operate. I would love to
Speaker 1: do that one day, but apparently you have to train qualified.
Speaker 1: I've never been in the cabin while they've operated it.
Speaker 1: But you know, there are some Marta trains where they
Speaker 1: have the sections at the front of the train car.
Speaker 1: You might not be You're not You're not in the
Speaker 1: front of the train. You're somewhere in the middle or
Speaker 1: towards the pack or whatever. But you give me right
Speaker 1: there where you might be on another train car that's
Speaker 1: a driving car. It's just not being used as a
Speaker 1: driving car. Point. And then you can look in at
Speaker 1: the controls all you like and no one freaks out
Speaker 1: because there's no one in there. But the controls are
Speaker 1: really basic, right. There's there's essentially a throttle control, which
Speaker 1: tells the motor how hard to work and thus how
Speaker 1: fast the train will go. And then there's a break
Speaker 1: and there are a couple of other controls for things
Speaker 1: like the doors there's a radio system generally speaking, so
Speaker 1: that if passengers have an emergency or need to communicate
Speaker 1: to the driver for some reason, they can do so. Uh.
Speaker 1: And these trains have a specific name in the industry.
Speaker 1: They're called rolling stock. Weird. That makes me think of
Speaker 1: cattle the same here, and sometimes I feel like it
Speaker 1: and I'm on com on one of these trains. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's their general name, is rolling stock. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: of them are entirely computerized, so you don't even have
Speaker 1: drivers on those trains. They're all automated. It makes me
Speaker 1: think of the the plane train at Hartsfield internationally. You
Speaker 1: know they they there's no driver on that, it's a
Speaker 1: computerized it's just the thing that kind of goes around
Speaker 1: the airport. Yeah, whereas we're talking about these, there would
Speaker 1: be for the entire system. So New York City subways
Speaker 1: are being upgraded over time, and they would be fully
Speaker 1: computerized once the upgrade is done, and you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: subway train drivers. It would all be computerized. And there's
Speaker 1: there's still like a human being in a supervisory position.
Speaker 1: It's sure. Yeah, you have to have people who are
Speaker 1: overseeing the system itself, so you think of a like
Speaker 1: a control sense, like like like mission control for space.
Speaker 1: For a space mission, you have people who are overseeing
Speaker 1: the track systems, monitoring them, making sure that you're still
Speaker 1: getting a signal on all the tracks. You know. That's
Speaker 1: one nice thing about using electric tracks is that if
Speaker 1: there's a break in that connection, you're gonna know about it,
Speaker 1: because you're going to suddenly have a section of track
Speaker 1: where there's no electricity generator. You're gonna see that there's
Speaker 1: no longer a complete circuit. Uh Their sensors placed along
Speaker 1: the tracks to make sure you know the position and
Speaker 1: the motion of any given train on any given part
Speaker 1: of the system. They're usually surveillance cameras that allow you
Speaker 1: to get a look at that. Uh So, these are
Speaker 1: all very important elements of any subway system, whether it's
Speaker 1: computerized or whether it's still operating mainly under manual control.
Speaker 1: You want to have this kind of command center where
Speaker 1: you can see what's going on and make sure that
Speaker 1: if maybe there's a signal that's not functioning properly and
Speaker 1: it's telling drivers that they cannot go forward, if you
Speaker 1: are the administrator and you see that the train needs
Speaker 1: to move forward, so that passengers can get off the
Speaker 1: train safely, and then they can then send out the
Speaker 1: maintenance crew. They you know, the administrators can actually see
Speaker 1: ahead and say, all right, your path is clear, or
Speaker 1: may be you need to switch. We're gonna switch you
Speaker 1: to this other track so that you can pull in safely,
Speaker 1: and then we'll shut everything down and fix it. I've
Speaker 1: been on a train where that has happened, and it's
Speaker 1: not the fastest uh experience. Right, It's not always the
Speaker 1: most smooth process, but it is one of those things
Speaker 1: that these these operations have to keep take into consideration. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some of the other modern trains have regenderative regenerative breaking,
Speaker 1: so they can regenerate some electrical power. They can store
Speaker 1: that in batteries for whenever they're having to apply breaks. Um,
Speaker 1: and you usually you have, uh. The only other thing
Speaker 1: you have to worry about are the various if if
Speaker 1: you're talking about manually driven trains, are those lights I
Speaker 1: was talking, Ah, yes, yeah, and this is look, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be honest with you. Yeah, And this is one
Speaker 1: of those things that I like to say would be
Speaker 1: a dream job, but I think it's just because I
Speaker 1: I want to do it for an app after New Yeah,
Speaker 1: so if anybody listening to this show, well, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like kind of being an engineer on a
Speaker 1: train or a conductor on it. Like I said that,
Speaker 1: I mean there is this I think lots of people
Speaker 1: have this desire, like it's just kind of a cool
Speaker 1: sort of experience to do once. I imagine there is
Speaker 1: some skill to it because you have to know exactly
Speaker 1: where to pull up in a station. Um, some stations,
Speaker 1: like like in Martha, we have different lengths of train
Speaker 1: depending upon the routes they're going on. So some of
Speaker 1: them are express trains and they're shorter, uh, and they
Speaker 1: make a much shorter run along the line than the
Speaker 1: full length trains. So you have to know where to
Speaker 1: pull up in a short train compared to a long train,
Speaker 1: because it makes a big difference. You don't want you
Speaker 1: don't want everyone having to run all the way down
Speaker 1: the platform in order to get on your train. I
Speaker 1: think maybe sometimes, But Okay, So the reason I'm bringing
Speaker 1: this up is because it sound is like this might
Speaker 1: this might be our last chance, man, this might be
Speaker 1: our last chance to be human human subway drivers, what
Speaker 1: what's the future of the subway? So computerization is definitely
Speaker 1: a big one. And then there are some other proposed
Speaker 1: methods of getting people around in trains through tunnel systems
Speaker 1: that owe a lot to subways but operate on a
Speaker 1: very different level, and the big one being the hyper loop,
Speaker 1: which tech Stuff did a full episode about the hyper
Speaker 1: loop if you're curious what the hyper loop is. It
Speaker 1: was a proposal that Elon Musk or Elon Musk made
Speaker 1: um where he said, think about a tunnel system where
Speaker 1: trains can travel through the system. It's uh, the air
Speaker 1: has been largely pumped out. It's not a true vacuum,
Speaker 1: but it's close to vacuum so that you have minimal
Speaker 1: air resistance, and you could make these incredibly rapid train
Speaker 1: trips between San Francisco and law So Angeles and a
Speaker 1: fraction of the amount of time it would normally take
Speaker 1: you to get between those. That could be a future
Speaker 1: of train systems too, although granted that works really better
Speaker 1: for long distance travel, not sure city travel. So I
Speaker 1: do think computerization is the way it's gonna go. And
Speaker 1: we have some fun, little cool facts about subways in
Speaker 1: general that we just thought, you know, it didn't really fit.
Speaker 1: And the rest of the episode. Um. One of those
Speaker 1: is that you may have heard about abandoned subway lines
Speaker 1: and abandoned subway stations, and those are totally a thing.
Speaker 1: They're real, And I know it sounds like some X
Speaker 1: Files episode or spy thriller, but human civilization it turns
Speaker 1: out as depressingly good at losing things, including subways. In London,
Speaker 1: for example, when population density has changed and commuting patterns changed,
Speaker 1: some stations became irrelevant or obsolete, and so they would
Speaker 1: stop servicing those stations, and sometimes there would be entire
Speaker 1: lines that would be obsolete, so tunnels would be unused.
Speaker 1: And there are still stations underneath the streets of London
Speaker 1: that look more or less the way they did when
Speaker 1: they closed. They haven't haven't changed significantly. I mean, for
Speaker 1: one thing, getting down into the subway is incredibly dangerous
Speaker 1: and not easy to do very much. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: not like this is the kind of place where squatters
Speaker 1: are going to, you know, find their way down there.
Speaker 1: But there are some subway stations and subway lines that exist,
Speaker 1: but there are in no way used anymore. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. It's not just London that's a good example,
Speaker 1: just the oldest, but the um there are other ones
Speaker 1: in other subway systems as well. Another is that subway
Speaker 1: systems have to have massive ventilation systems, even after the
Speaker 1: steam coal era. They need them because you're underground and
Speaker 1: while you might have stations that are open to the air, uh,
Speaker 1: that's not enough to circulate air through the whole system.
Speaker 1: And if you're in an underground station waiting with a
Speaker 1: bunch of other commuters, you're all breathing in and out,
Speaker 1: You're all breathing out carbon dioxide that starts to accumulate.
Speaker 1: You don't have any circulation. Things could get uncomfortable and
Speaker 1: deadly fairly quickly. Actually doesn't take that long, depending on
Speaker 1: where you are, especially in some places like the Moscow
Speaker 1: subway system, which is has famously deep stations like that
Speaker 1: is out and out dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. And and even
Speaker 1: if you're thinking, well, I'm not going to be in
Speaker 1: the station that long, just think we're talking about a
Speaker 1: continuous flow of people coming down there breathing out carbon dioxide.
Speaker 1: Because it's not just when you're there, it's all the
Speaker 1: people who came before you, it's all the people who
Speaker 1: are coming after you. It's going to eventually get to
Speaker 1: the point where it's so stuffy. It's not it's not breathable.
Speaker 1: So there are all these ventilation systems built into subway systems.
Speaker 1: There are ventilation shafts. They are giant air essentially climate
Speaker 1: controlled style systems to recirculate air, to pull fresh air
Speaker 1: from the surface down into the tunnels to make it safe.
Speaker 1: The New York City one has a system that is
Speaker 1: capable of moving six hundred thousand cubic feet of fresh
Speaker 1: air every single minute. That's pretty cool. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: pretty necessary. I mean, I've been to the New York subway.
Speaker 1: More fresh air the better, in my opinion. And there's
Speaker 1: there's also so there's this continual operation that is sort
Speaker 1: of behind the curtain. For the average subway user, you
Speaker 1: will probably not ever see the massive amount of work
Speaker 1: that makes it possible for people to go underground and
Speaker 1: then come back out alive. Ventilation is one of those,
Speaker 1: but that's not the only one. No. The other one
Speaker 1: being that you're on a train. The trains running on rails,
Speaker 1: you have to make sure those rails are lined up properly.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are these rails, aren't It's not like
Speaker 1: it's one solid rail that goes the entire length of
Speaker 1: the of the train line right, it's in segments, and
Speaker 1: segments means that over time the ground might shift the train.
Speaker 1: Just the wear and tear of trains going on, it
Speaker 1: could make things shift where a lot of lines can
Speaker 1: get out of alignment, like two rails might get out
Speaker 1: of alignment with one another, and that could lead to
Speaker 1: very dangerous conditions like a train derailing if it's not
Speaker 1: if the tracks aren't aligned properly. So in order to
Speaker 1: make sure the tracks are lined up, a lot of
Speaker 1: subway systems use UH geometry trains, which sounds like it's
Speaker 1: my least favorite subject in school being forced upon me
Speaker 1: in a mass Transit mean it, but it's not. No
Speaker 1: geometry trades. Geometry trains are specifically designed to check the
Speaker 1: alignment of rails, and they have UH equipment aboard, including
Speaker 1: a computer system that can analyze data and a collection system.
Speaker 1: It usually involves infrared like UH infrared laser type system
Speaker 1: to check for alignment. It can check how out of
Speaker 1: true a rail is and if it goes outside a
Speaker 1: certain threshold, it created you know it logs it says,
Speaker 1: at this point, this rail is no longer aligned within
Speaker 1: the safety zone and it may very well be that
Speaker 1: it's still all right to use at that moment, but
Speaker 1: it's getting dangerously close to not being okay. So then
Speaker 1: it logs that sends in a maintenance request and the
Speaker 1: maintenance crew will have to go out to that point
Speaker 1: and adjust the tracks so that they were in alignment. Again. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's very useful system to have that um and it's
Speaker 1: one of those things that is necessary over And one
Speaker 1: other cool fact it's not in our our notes, but
Speaker 1: it was one that we talked about briefly before we
Speaker 1: came in here, is that subway systems have been used
Speaker 1: to keep people safe during wartime and related type events,
Speaker 1: like in in the Blitz when London was being bombed. Often, uh,
Speaker 1: citizens of London would end up retreating into the underground
Speaker 1: because there was enough of protection there to keep them
Speaker 1: safe during the bombings. Yeah. So if you were lucky
Speaker 1: enough to live near a subway station, if there's some
Speaker 1: sort of blitz, which I hope never happens to anyone,
Speaker 1: but if there's some sort of situation like that, then
Speaker 1: that is one of the best bets for you to go.
Speaker 1: As long as the ventilation is working. Yeah, I often
Speaker 1: think of like when I've been I've been in downtown
Speaker 1: Atlanta a couple of times when um tornadoes have moved through,
Speaker 1: that's my go to, like I want to get underground.
Speaker 1: Now you know, we actually had tornadoes moved through Atlanta
Speaker 1: several years ago. Now, yeah, they went straight through downtown
Speaker 1: like it was like it was like nadoes were looking
Speaker 1: for dragon Con. It was all the dragon Con locations
Speaker 1: got hit. They might have been cause players, it could
Speaker 1: have been it could have been people, it could have
Speaker 1: been people saying. And my here's my theory. People from
Speaker 1: the future coming back in time to attend dragon Con
Speaker 1: makes sense cause playing as Sharknado not realizing they overshot
Speaker 1: their travel and went back to before Sharknado people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: time travel is like just the scheduling is tricky, and
Speaker 1: they didn't stick around to apologize or explain because they
Speaker 1: were so embarrassed that they had overshot. When they needed
Speaker 1: to come back, they're like, oh, that's Sharknado is not
Speaker 1: even out. Our costumes don't make sense. Let's go. Let's go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, work hard on a costume. It's so easy
Speaker 1: to feel dumb. It all makes sense to me. Now, well,
Speaker 1: I am going to possibly cosplay as piercing. That would
Speaker 1: be good. You could go around and try and convince
Speaker 1: people to give you lots of money to go underground,
Speaker 1: and I just need to start digging, right, Jonathan, That's
Speaker 1: pretty much it. Yeah, just get a shovel, a shovel
Speaker 1: and a song on your heart and you're good to go.
Speaker 1: So this was a lot of fun to look into.
Speaker 1: I mean, this was one of those things where I
Speaker 1: know it became a large largely a history lesson, but
Speaker 1: to know sort of the massive undertaking it requires to
Speaker 1: build something like a subway system, it really lets you
Speaker 1: appreciate that technology is more than a story about how
Speaker 1: an object works when you flip a switch, what is happening?
Speaker 1: The story of technology goes well beyond circuits or motors
Speaker 1: or engines. It goes into the story of the people
Speaker 1: around it. Who were the people responsible for bringing that
Speaker 1: technology to life. What sort of hoops did they have
Speaker 1: to jump through in order for it to become a reality.
Speaker 1: Was it something that was adopted early on or was
Speaker 1: it something that that ended up being dormant for years
Speaker 1: before people said this is a brilliant idea. Those to
Speaker 1: me are the really amazing stories that I get to
Speaker 1: tell on this podcast. And Ben, I am so thankful
Speaker 1: you could join me for this poet. The pleasure is
Speaker 1: absolutely all my and Jonathan. And that was a really
Speaker 1: uh that was very well said, and I think it's
Speaker 1: I think it's so appropriate for such a milestone episode
Speaker 1: as well. I'm kind of inspired now I want I
Speaker 1: want to go out and invent a train system. I
Speaker 1: would like to at least, you know, leave some sort
Speaker 1: of positive impact before I shuffle off this mortal coil. Uh.
Speaker 1: And if this podcast happens to be it that, I'm
Speaker 1: cool with that. Not not this particular episode. I'm not
Speaker 1: ready to go right now. I mean this podcast in general.
Speaker 1: You want to Stay above Ground a little bit longer? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: me and me and the Prime Minister of England. We
Speaker 1: want to Stay above Ground was a little bit longer. Uh.
Speaker 1: So this was a lot of fun And of course
Speaker 1: you can all find Ben's work all over How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: Car Stuff is the podcast you do with Scott Benjamin, Yeah,
Speaker 1: who's also appeared on this show and uh got a
Speaker 1: show called stuff They don't want you to know. Now.
Speaker 1: You and I are thick as thieves. We hang out
Speaker 1: on brain stuff, and we hang out on what the stuff,
Speaker 1: and then sometimes we just uh, we just make interesting things.
Speaker 1: But I do want to do something that I've done
Speaker 1: most times when I get a guest spot here on
Speaker 1: your show, and that is to plug your other show
Speaker 1: forward thinking to anybody, for anybody who hasn't checked it out.
Speaker 1: If you like, if you like tech stuff, if you
Speaker 1: like talking about especially the stories around technology and possibilities,
Speaker 1: then do check that show out on YouTube and iTunes. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's ah. That shows a lot of fun to do. Uh.
Speaker 1: The the video series is phenomenal. Uh. I get to
Speaker 1: work with some of the most talented people, the producers,
Speaker 1: the editors, the writers, because I want to Yeah, it
Speaker 1: can't be really funny. They wanted to They wanted to
Speaker 1: see the future through my eyes, and you can't do
Speaker 1: that without being a little corny and goofy Uh. It's
Speaker 1: largely serious, but I do get to have fun with it,
Speaker 1: and um, very fun to do. And then of course
Speaker 1: the audio podcast has Laurens vogelbamb and Joe McCormick in it,
Speaker 1: both of whom have been obviously guest podcasters, and Lauren's
Speaker 1: my former co host, So if you miss that interaction,
Speaker 1: you should go check that out. It's fantastic. This has
Speaker 1: been great, guys. I am so happy to have reached
Speaker 1: episode seven hundred. I can't wait to get episode four hundred.
Speaker 1: I'm even gonna skip anything special for one thousand. That's
Speaker 1: not true. I don't know. I don't know what I'll
Speaker 1: do for one thousand. That's in like three years. So
Speaker 1: let's have a parade. How parades work, Jonathan. Everyone always
Speaker 1: asks me to do how how stuff works works or
Speaker 1: how tech stuff works. But I've done those. You need
Speaker 1: to look at episodes five hundred and six hundred. But
Speaker 1: it is a lot of fun to do these kind
Speaker 1: of special episodes. And of course I'm always interested to
Speaker 1: hear what our listeners have to say. If you guys
Speaker 1: have any requests for specific episodes, maybe there's someone you
Speaker 1: want me to interview, Maybe there's a particular guest host
Speaker 1: you really want to have back on for a particular topic.
Speaker 1: Let me send me a message. The email addresses tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com. Drop me a
Speaker 1: line on Twitter, Facebook or Tumbler. The handle it all
Speaker 1: three is text stuff h s W, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again. Releases for more on this and bathands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Does it have stuff works dot com