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