"Songs of the Subway", Input/Output, ME Departments, December 2005

input/output

by Chuck Beardsley

Songs of the Subway

"You must take the 'A' train/To go to Sugar Hill 'way up in Harlem." Billy Strayhorn for Duke Ellington, 1941.

Prior to the opening of its subway 101 years ago, New York could be characterized as a city of horse cars (and manure), street and cable cars, and steam locomotives.

The subway began service on Oct. 27, 1904, at the new City Hall station. The arched ceiling of Gustavino tiles and the chandeliers—still intact today—are hardly the design motif contemporary straphangers expect.

Financier August Belmont handed the silver control key to Mayor George McClellan, who startled the dignitaries on board by taking the train to 145th Street, a distance of nine miles, at speeds up to 40 miles per hour.

The VIPs survived, as did the Interborough Rapid Transit system. Today, the IRT is a key link in a citywide system of over 722 miles of track serving 4.5 million passengers daily from 468 stations.

The original City Hall subway station, with stained-glass skylights.

In 1978, ASME and the American Society of Civil Engineers designated the original nine miles of track, including its power system and signals, a landmark: "The first fully electrically signaled railroad in the United States and the first practical subway in New York City."

The landmark dedication included the unveiling of a bronze plaque at Brooklyn Bridge station. The City Hall station has been closed since 1949 because its platforms cannot accommodate trains longer than five cars. The station opened briefly last year for a reenactment of the first ride 100 years before.

Proposals to build a rapid transit system in New York were first offered in 1831. By 1868, the first elevated railway was erected. As the "El" became crowded, city officials proposed a railway powered by electricity to run
underground.

The first contract for construction was adopted in November 1899, and ground was broken in March 1900. Using the cut-and-cover method, 12,000 men worked to build the subway. A trench was cut to accommodate a 55-foot-wide, 15-foot-high tunnel. The rails were laid and the stations built. The finished work was enclosed in steel beams, and a shallow layer of fill and paving was then placed over the trench.

Five types of construction characterized the effort: steel I-beams for the roof and sides, plate-reinforced concrete supported by steel angle columns, concrete-lined tunnels, cast-iron tubes under rivers, and steel viaduct elevated structures.

"The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls . . ." Paul Simon, 1964.

The IRT built its own powerhouse along the Hudson River, where coal was brought by barge. Reciprocating and turbine steam engines delivered high-voltage alternating current to eight substations, which stepped down the ac current and converted it to dc.

All-steel rolling stock replaced steel-and-wood cars in the first year of operation. Some of the all-steel cars were still running as late as 1958.

An interlocking block system of signals and switches— together with automatic trippers—kept trains safely apart and stopped them if a motorman ran a stop signal. Another first, the "deadman's button," automatically stopped a train if the motorman's hand was removed from the controller handle.

During construction of the subway, engineers faced many challenges. Tall buildings along the route had to be underpinned. The streets housed a complex network of subsurface structures—water and gas mains, sewers, conduits for electrical cables, electric surface railway systems, telegraph lines, and basement vaults.

On that first day of operation, 150,000 people took the subway. The next day, a Friday, was the subway's first practical test. It proved a success, although Sadie Lawson of Manhattan tripped in the 14th Street station and fractured her hip, and a gentleman reported the theft of his diamond stickpin.

Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit (the BMT) connected Manhattan and Queens to Brooklyn by subway in 1915. In the 1930s, the city built its own system, known as the Independent Rapid Transit (IND) railway. In 1940, the city took over the bankrupt IRT and BMT lines under the single banner of the New York Transit System—which has been under jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority since 1968.

The historic landmark plaque no longer graces the Brooklyn Bridge station, its whereabouts unknown. Did it take the A train?

In any event, we still "have Manhattan, where the subway charms us so," as Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart put it in 1925.

The author is a former editor of Mechanical Engineering.