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