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

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