I also remember the Rupert Brewery on the east side of the tracks somewhere along the line north of 42nd Street.
The configuration of the express stops depended on the amount of land or street space available.
I also remember the Rupert Brewery on the east side of the tracks somewhere along the line north of 42nd Street.
The configuration of the express stops depended on the amount of land or street space available.
Great forum on NY Subway/El. It is difficult to get much info/photos of the system - especially the “good old days” of el operation (say pre-1960s) here in Europe.
Expresses, locals, 3/4/6 tracks, hump stations and so on - what an incrdible system!!!
What books - with good photos and operational info - can contributers recommend? And any videos/DVDs of the pre 60s era?
Thanks.
Eric Stuart (ex-UK, now in France)
I am tempted to read that as just a bit of an exaggeration — are you talking about legally usable pedestrian passageways, or using some poetic license?
Eric, there is – or at least was a few years ago — a VHS film for sale of the 3rd Avenue around the end of its operation in Manhattan. I own it. If I can find mine I will give you the details.
There are various photo books of “old New York;” (I see them in Barnes & Noble) whether or not there’s one that concentrates on the elevated railways of Manhattan I do not know. Probably somebody on this forum does know.
Legally useable, but inside the fare-paying cubic. There were (and may still be) mezannine levels above the 6th Ave IND line (don’t know what it’s called today) and the 42nd Street shuttle. I seem to recall having to do a multi-turn dance around BMT access somewhere around Times Square.
Some of those passageways were rather dim and dingy, and little used. If they’re still there, they would be magnets for the homeless.
Chuck
You are only partly correct by saying underground from Grand Central to Penn. There was a small
gap between Madison Avenue and Grand Central, with its nearest entrance at 42nd and Vanderbilt. There was and probably still is a Madison Avenue entrance/exit for the Fifth Avenue station of the No. 7 Flushing - Times Square Line. This station has a passegeway from the west end, west of 5th Avenue to the Sixth Avenue (Avenue of Americas) 42nd Street Station, and the Sixth Avenue subway was built with a continuous mezzanine from the 42nd Street Station down to and throught the 34th Street Sation’s 32nd Street entrance/exit and the 3-track terminal and concourse for PATH (subway to New Jersey, the old Hudson Tubes). The 34th Street Station also has a level for the 4-track BMT Broadway subway. And a Pedestrian Passegeway under 33rd Street to Penn Station and the 7th Avenue and 8th Avenue subways.
I was asked on the private Forum about the differences between strictly elevated structures and the remaining subway lines on structures. Here is a comparison table
Privately Built Elevated Lines: open-web trusses under running rails and transverse, pillars under center of local track usually in roadway, separate access to platforms for each direction with separate fare collection
“City Built Subways on Viaduct” High I-beam girders both under running rails and transverse, pillars at edge of structure, usually on sidewalks just inside the curve line, mezzanin under the tracks and under the platforms, with stairs up to the platforms, and one fare collection point for both directions.h
This is general and there were exceptions
The old style of elevated construction can still be seen on East Fulton Street between East New York - Eastern Parkway - Broadway Junction and Cypress Street on the “J” line, and parts of the st
There was no gap in the mezzanine between the Lexington Avenue station and Madison Avenue “back when.” Of course, there has been a LOT of construction and modification since.
The one thing that sticks the hardest in my memory about the elevated structure from Pelham Bay to the beginning of underground trackage was the way the curves were superelevated. There were separate wedges, about six inches wide and a foot long, under the outside rail on EVERY tie. The ties were level, as was the top of the steelwork that supported them. Don’t know if the same trick was used on the Third Avenue structure. It certainly had enough curves in the South Bronx!
Chuck (once, but not future, New Yorker)
Weren’t at least some of the old open-truss el structures rebuilt at some point in their history with girder construction (the kind you describe as the “city built” type of construction)?
This has been a most interesting thread! I am slightly familiar with Chicago’s EL and subway system and it doesn’t hold a candle to what has been described here. There was only ONE multilevel El station is Chicago, the result of two companies at odds with each other.
Ah the good old Classic Train days!
Art
Yes, the Broadway Brooklyn (“J”) elevated structure was originally open-web and was replaced with the “City-Built” type structure. Also part of the Fulton Street elevated that was torn down after Unification in 1940 because the “A” subway line already provided service below. Interestingly, there is one “City Built” structure that is open-web, can be seen today, south of Kings Highway on the old Culver Line, now the “F”. It was discovered that some of the steelwork removed from Fulton Street was far better than expected and could be reused.
Some of today’s elevated structures in Brooklyn are over streets where the elevated trains actually ran on the street on tracks that later were used by only by streetcars and occasional freight trains. Macdonald Avenue, formerly Gravesend Avenue, of the “F” line is one example. Quite a history, originally a steam railroad connecting with a horsecar line to downtown Brooklyn and with Ferries to Manhattan at a dock at 39th Street. Through steam operation with the Long Island for summer Coney Island and to an on-line race track. This continued even after the line was electrified with trolley wire and both streetcars and elevated trains off a ramp from the 5th Avenue Elevated at 37th Street from the Brooklyn Bridge. Trains taken off the street and put on the elevated structure 1918-1920 in stages. Then steel car operation through to Manhattan via the 4th Avenue subway with elevated service via 5th Avenue contninuing until unification in 1940. Then around 1957? the massive rerouting away from 4th Avenue subway and via the Church Avenue line of the Independent subway, first the “D” and now for many years the “F”.
Apologies, I was not specific enough in my question. Were any of the Manhattan el lines (2nd, 3rd, 6th, 9th) ever rebuilt from open truss to “City style” (i.e., plate girder) construction?
They were strengthened but not rebuilt, and in some cases a solid web girder system was used for an additional center track where center tracks didn’t exist before (and they did exist over most of the lines, except 6th Avenue itself, which never did get three tracks, continuing with just two.) Most of the humps at the hump stations used solid girders. There were many places were open web was seen on the local tracks and solid on the center track. Also places where all three were open web.
It is possible that the entire length of center track on both 2nd and 3rd Avenues may have been solid web. The Freeman Street Expresses on 2nd Avenue and the Through Expresses on 3rd used a combination of gate-car trains and composites, former subway cars. They ran packed to the gills in the direction of rush hour traffic on the center tracks but as light non-revenue movements in the reverse direction on a local track.
This has been a most interesting thread! I am slightly familiar with Chicago’s EL and subway system and it doesn’t hold a candle to what has been described here. There was only ONE multilevel El station is Chicago, the result of two companies at odds with each other.
Ah the good old Classic Train days!
Art
With all due respects, in Chicago it’s the “L”, even when it’s underground or in a median strip. We never refer to it as the “El”.
Oh yeah, L - not El. Guilty as charged yer Honner. My feeble defense is that I lived just 25 years in Illinois (born there and lived some 3 years in Chi) but later spent 26 years in upper New York State where I learned Newyorkese. But if I claim that I thought I was talking to New Yorkers and was using Newyorkese so they would unnerstan’ me, I’d be in trouble with the NYM.
So I’ll take my punishment and go and sin no more.
Art
For me, the complexity and variety of the New York “El” was matched by the Chcagio “L”. I am glad to have had the experience in the summer of 1952, when Stockyards and Kenwood were still running, and the two interurbans still entiering via the “L” . Most people agree that the North Shore was truly the USA’s finest interurban, and that and the “Roaren Elgin” were separate and worthwhile worlds, much missed.
In New York, different broad catagories of equipment were allways run together. I never saw an MUDC car miksed in with gate cars. But in Chicago, one could see mixed trains in regular service, particularly steel cars mixed with wooden. In Brooklyn there was some variety of gate car equipment, since surviving gate-car equipment from the steam railroad days from different predicessor companies did have different architecture.
OK, Pacific Electric fans, I realilze the CNS&M didn’t have a four-track main line, but it did use the 4-track northside “L”.
. . . in some cases a solid web girder system was used for an additional center track
If I could ask for some structural engineering details, your use of the term “solid web girder system” sounds to my ears like an oxymoron — i.e., I think of the structure as either “solid,” i.e., a plate girder construction such the city Els of today have, or a “web,” which I see in very old NYC El photos. You appear to know a lot about the construction of these systems; and while I’m on that matter, coud you recommend a good photo book which is in print and available today which focuses on containing good photos of the manhattan Els in the 20th century.
Sorry, I have been disconnected from structural engineering terms for over ten years. Open web should be truss construction, the closed web is really meant to describe plate girder construction, and to make the point, yes the 2nd Avenue and 3rd Avenue Els where the composites ran did have plate girders under the center track and trusses under the two local tracks in most areas.
The William Fullerton Reeves 1936 book is probably permanently available from the New York Historical Society and is an authoritative and accurate history, with a positive outlook because the abandonments were in the future. Other then that, I suggest you access the Neew York based Electric Railroaders’ Association website. Even though I remain a member, I usually access is via the Light Railway Transport Association website: www.lrta.org - then pull up on Links, Clubs, USA, and then New York and then ERA. They have published a lot of stuff.
Thanks for those leads Dave. . . . The New York Historical Society (77th ST & CPW) is mere walking distance from our apt. on the west side, so it will be quite easy for me to check it out. I’ll look at the other links too
Your info is great. Thank for the trip down memory lane. I attended Cardinal Spellman. I believe Tremont Avenue is the correct spelling and we still call it White Plains Road.
But take a look at the STREET SIGNS. And then get back. The Third Avenue Transit Ssystem “W” line streetcars (extra wide 1200-series second-hand double-truck Birneys) had the big white brighit red W in the right dash panel with “Webster & White Plains Avs.” in white below.