To clear up the confusion, no, all work on A Division is not built to B Division standards. A good case is the new South Ferry station which is completely A-Division clearances, not just platform edges.
What is true, is that all City-built elevated structures, both A and B Division, are built to standard plans, allowing stocking of parts and girders etc., for economical repaiar and replacement. Thus, the Astoria elevated, which was originally built for IRT-sized cars, was easily converted to handle the BMT through operation. Another exception is the No. 6 subway in the Bronx, which was one of the latest IRT subways constructed, and which probably can be converted, and where all work in recent years has kiept that in mind. But the adhering to B-Division standards in new work in not ell-encompasing, just decided on a case-by-case basis.
The extension of the A to Liberty Avenue over former Fulton Street El structure did not require platform modifications, because the 14th Street -Lefferts rush hour Multi subway service preceded this conversion, and that elevated was built for 10-feet cars originally to conform to the width of the original Brooklyn Bridge cable railway line cars.
The increasingly cashless (Metrocard,credit card readers, etc.) fare payment system lead the MTA to switch to collection by armored cash carrier,they own a small fleet of those vehicles:
The standard elevated structures were all built for three tracks, even as on Livonia Avenue in Brooklyn (2) and Jamaica Avenue, the center express track was left out. All construction was heavy enough to allow the addition with its support girders. In addition to these two, the standard structures include New Utrecht Avenue (D), Macdonald Avenue Ditmas - Kings Highway or Avenue X (F), Jerome Avenue (4), northern Westchester Avenue (6), White Plains Road (2), most of Flushing Line (7) north of Queens Blbd on Roosevelt Avenue, and Astoria (N). On the other hand, the Manhatenville Viaduct each side of 125th Street on Broadway (1), the southern portion of Westchester Avenue the short stretch on Southen Blvd. (2 and 5), and I think Broadway north of Dykeman were designed and built by the IRT. Similarly, the Broadway elevated in Brooklyn, Myrtle Avenue (not sure about this, may be part and part), the complex around East New York and the Jsmaica elevated as far as Cyrpess or Ceder, was designed and built by the BMT or its predicessors.
When the BMT and IRT ran joint service on both Flushing and Astoria, the BMT steel subwy equipment ran only to Queensboro Plaza, and beyond that point pasengers were accomodated on composite cpen-platform gate cars, replaced by the open-platform cars rebult into side-sliding-door steel-end cars conforming to IRT restrictions. These later went to the 3rd Avenue Elevated and ended up replacing the last gate cars Myrtle Avenu Metropolitan Avenue - Downtown Brooklyn Bridge and Jay Streets, torn down south of Broadway.
I do not know of any changes to the Astoria Line other than cutting back platform edges and relocating those black-on-white numbers shwoing where to stop according to train lenth, although the changes at Queensboro Plaze station and the junctions on each side were very extensive. It was an eight-track, two-level station, with foiur tracks on each level, now it is a four-track station with two on each level.
I guess the paper written by the NYC board of transportation was wrong about this. I should probably go find it and post it here.
Fun fact: the old South Ferry station used those automatic gap filler appliances with a recorded announcement warning passengers to pay attention to them.
The Board of Transportation paper may have been written at or shortly after Unification, June, 1940. And practical economics may have caused the change in policy since then.
Conversion of the NYW&B line for operation by the IRT as the Dyar Avenue line was done with the possibility of eventual operatoin by the B Division, and all clearances were so planned except for the station platforms, where the nozings are wood and can be removed to accomodate 10-ft wide cars. Signals were and are IND standard.
The north-south portion, but not the east-west portion, of the new 7 line extension to 11th and 34th may also be planend this way.
IRT was intentioally built to smaller dimensions so that “real trains” could not operat there.
It is just not worth the cost of changing it, since the routes are what they are.
There are more projects that could use that money.
All IRT tunnels are built to the larger statndards except the original City Hall to 242nd Street via Times Square (think shuttle alignment). The only difference there is the depth of the platform edges. It would not be prohibitive to cut them back. That was an intended possibility. The other problem however is the length of the platforms. No IRT platform can berth a 600’ train. B Division trains using the IRT would need be limited to 8 cars.
The Money Train is long retired. It basically went away with the token.
First there is not enough cash in the booths any more, and the time to service TVMs is so extensive that a Money Train would tie up the railroad to a farethewell.
Armored Cars are now used up on the streets. The driver undoubtedly remains with the car, Two Guarda (well armed) and a Technician goes down to service the machines. Replentish tickets and remove cash from several machines. The Station Agent has no access to the vending machines.
The Route of the Broadway LION does have a money train. : )
Some recent repairs caused new problems. The tracks in the Monague Tunnel were upgraded during the shutdown. Problem is the new profile is an inch or two taller, ergo some of the older equipment can no longer fit in there. I think the only cars that are embargoed are the R-32s.
Lion, as far as I know, the R-32’s are not taller than newer equipment. The older equipmenet that may be unable to fit are probably the various nostalgia trains, with cleristory and semi-cleristory roofs, R1- R10, BMT Steel Standards ("B-types), D-Types, IRT LowV’s, and the elevated gate-cars.
The IRT R-33 and R-36 cars, which became the Red-Bird fleet, are as tall as the R-32’s and the remaining ones are work-motors and rider cars that can run anywhere on the entire system.
In passing, the 4th Avenue subway in Brooklyn has higher than normal clearances to accomodate the regular box and refrigorator cars of the period (1915).
Contract II did include the upper portion of the Lexington Avenue subway, the part from Grand Central south beihng part of the original subway. I think from memory from all the times I rode that line, that the track spacings and tunnel width with invert on each side would not permit easy conversion to B-Division standards. More than cutting back platformj nosings woiuld be required. Nearly the whole line is in a double-level tunnel, with the local tracks on the upper level and the express tracks on the lower level. At 116th Street you have a conventional single-level four-track subway local station, and at 125th two levels again, but with southbound local and express on one level and northbound on another. (Lion or someone can remind me which is up and which is down.)
I only know about the embargo, not the mechanical reasons behind it. The issue is a vertical issue. The spacing of the trucks could have something to do with it as well as the overall height of the train.
N (ote that when the Q-types were about to start their third career on the Myrtle Avenue Elevated, they had their roofs lowered, so they could go to Coney Island, via the Nassau Cit and the Motague St. Tunnel for repair and maintencance. (There second careeer was on the 3rd Avenue Elevated, but they were built for BMT Astoria and Flushing services.
I don’t disagree, but I have to admit that I honestly can’t find the piece. I read it on the nycsubway.org web site and saved it, but I just can’t find this piece now. It’s a great article. They talked about how the IRT was an experiment and how the BMT reflected better ideas.
What this piece does not mention is that the BMT and IND specifications were derived from the wider trains used on the Boston Cambridge Subway (the modern MBTA Red Line) that were developed after intensive study of mass transit in that city. These specifications also ended up being the basis of most subway systems today including the Philadelphia Broad Street Subway and today’s BMT and IND.
You are correct. The Cambridge - Dorchester “Tunnel,” Boston Elevated cars pioneered doors (3) spaced along the side without any at the ends, standard railroad width, and longer cars. The original BMT steels, in A (single motor car) B (two driving motors each end with blind motor in the middle), BX (two driving motors with trailer in the middle, only one such in a seven-car train and not allowed over the Manhattan Bridge), and BT (BX with the trailer removed) were all based on the Cambrdge - Dorchester cars, with similar length and identacle width and height. But Stillwell came up with considerably lighter car design. I consider all these cars, Boston’s and the BMT’s as very good designs.
The IRT cars were simply adaptations of regular elevated railroad practice, Chicago as well as NY and Brooklyn, to the subway. Of course the big innovation was pioneering, along with the LIRR, steel construction. Structurally, the big Boston cars were an enlargement of the structural design of the modified Gibbs IRT subway cars, just then recently modified with center doors. The Gibbs design was basically a gondola car, with heavy framjing around doors to preseve sructural integraty. Stillwell’s designs used the entier side as a truss. Both of course were an improvment over a house on a flatcar, which was the typical previous wood-car construction.