In message , Tom
Anderson writes
On Thu, 18 Aug 2005, Ian Jelf wrote:

In message , Tom
Anderson writes

Conversely, London never had the el-to-subway transition that built
lot of the NYC system (there are one or two examples of this
happening in London, though).

I'll probably kick myself when you answer this.......but where are
there any examples of this happening in London?

There aren't - what i was thinking of, but didn't say, was
surface-running to underground transitions. Sorry!
I see what you mean! Sorry for the confusion, too.

As for that, i believe that some of the sub-surface network (i thought
it was the northern side of the Circle but can't find any evidence for
that) were built at or near ground level, for the use of steam engines,
but when electric trains became available, it was rebuilt underground
(presumably so the land on top could be built on).
"Sort of", I'd say.

The Metropolitan line as built has rather more open air sections than
now but I think that the gradual building over had as much to do with
pressure on land as it did with the conversion to electric traction.
Fortunately the two went hand in hand.

(I've always found it difficult to imagine what it must have been like
in steam days on the sub-surface lines. One of those experiences I'd
love to have, just once!)
--
Ian Jelf, MITG
Birmingham, UK

Registered Blue Badge Tourist Guide for London and the Heart of England
http://www.bluebadge.demon.co.uk

"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
.li...
Indeed. Perhaps the confusion in NYC could be avoided simply by changing
the names of the lines!

Well, the problem is that the express service trains usually only run
express in Manhattan, with exceptions during rush hour service. Example:

The 3 Lexington Ave. lines, #'s 4,5, and 6. The #6 train is a local train
during non-rush hour times, except for certain places in the Bronx, where it
runs express until it reaches 125th Street in Manhattan during rush hour.
(At which time, it switches back to local service, until its terminus at
Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall) At 125th Street, one can then switch to either
the #4 or #5 (which run on the same track in Manhattan. They run different
routes in the Bronx., and then the same route again when they pass into
Brooklyn from Manhattan.

Still with me?

Now, you have trains like the #1 Broadway local which ALWAYS run local
service the whole time, as far as I remember. ( This train starts in the far
northwest Bronx and runs to South Ferry in Manhattan.) The express service
trains on this Broadway route are the #'s 2 and 3, but I forget how their
service runs, other than they too go to Brooklyn and terminate somewhere
there. This may have changed in recent years, but I am not completely sure,
as I have not lived in the city for 6 years, but do keep up on things when I
can.

Confused yet?

Now you see the problem, as it goes beyond simply changing the line
designations. It is a matter of knowing the train timetables, and
understanding what constitutes rush hour, which usually means between 7-10
AM, and 4-7 PM, generally.

Now comes the fun of knowing which side of the platform to stand on for
which train............provided they didn't switch the express train to the
local track for whatever reason.........;-)

Martin Underwood wrote:

The Victoria Line was built as recently as 1968-71 and the Jubilee Line is
newer still: the Baker Street to Charing Cross section was 1979 and the
"Jubilee Line Extension" from Green Park to Stratford was completed as
recently as 1999 in preparation for passengers to get to the Millennium
Dome.


Although of course the Jubilee Line extension was decided upon before
the site of the offical Millennium celebrations.

"Stuart" wrote in message
news
Martin Underwood wrote:

The Victoria Line was built as recently as 1968-71 and the Jubilee Line
is newer still: the Baker Street to Charing Cross section was 1979 and
the "Jubilee Line Extension" from Green Park to Stratford was completed
as recently as 1999 in preparation for passengers to get to the
Millennium Dome.


Although of course the Jubilee Line extension was decided upon before the
site of the offical Millennium celebrations.

I probably put the cart before the horse there. The fact that the JLE was
going through that peninsular on the south bank of the Thames probably
influenced the choice of the site of the Millennium Dome.

[On building 4-track lines]
It's most definitely a better way of doing things, but prohibitively
expensive when drilling tunnels. With cut-and-cover, you just make
your trench a bit wider.

However, this also requires the *street* to be wide enough. Common
in New York, not so common in London.

With deep-level tunnels, you have to dig twice as many tunnels.

Or make them wide enough for two tracks each instead of one.
(Of course that could also have been done with the 2-track lines...)

The trouble with a double-track tunnel is that you either have to
excavate a lot of wasted space above and below the tracks, or else
make the tunnel walls stronger to compensate for the weaker non-circular
cross-section.

But, after all, there are lots of them on main-line railways; it's not
an impossible choice. And "wasting" space above the tracks actually
would have brought some benefits -- better ventilation, reduced air
resistance, more space for any wires or other utilities needed in the
tunnel, and and the possibility of converting to an overhead power supply
if this was ever found desirable.

Most New York 4-track lines have all the tracks side by side, but not
all. There are multiple places where two tracks are above the other
two -- either using a double-deck cut-and-cover tunnel, or using a
cut-and-cover tunnel for the locals above a deep tube for the express.

That last should ring a bell -- around 1900 the District Railway was
planning a deep-level express line under their existing route from
just east of Earl's Court as far as Mansion House. This is the origin
of the section of the Piccadilly Line that runs below the District
from West Kensington to South Kensington, although of course it was
not built as an express route, bypassing only the former station.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto "Information! ... We want information!"
-- The Prisoner

My text in this article is in the public domain.

Martin Underwood:
The first underground line was the one from Paddington to King's Cross -

Actually the first section opened continued to Farringdon.

what is now the Metropolitan/Circle.

No; it was originally the Metropolitan Railway, but in today's nomen-
clature it's part of the Hammersmith & City Line. Most of the original
route is also part of the Circle, but not at the Paddington end, where
the two lines split; and as for the Metropolitan Line, of course that's
now considered to branch off at Baker Street.

This was opened in 1863. I believe it
was originally driven by steam locos which condensed the steam rather than
releasing it into the tunnel.

The condensing didn't work so well once the Circle Line (then called the
Inner Circle) was opened in 1884, because there was no chance to stop the
trains and drain off the hot water. Nevertheless, steam working continued
until 1905.

I'm not sure what they did with the smoke...

They released it into the tunnel, and the management claimed that it was
good for you. (It smelled bad, so it must be, right?) One time at an
inquiry, a driver reported that it "very seldom" got thick enough to
obscure his view of the signals.
--
Mark Brader "Great things are not done by those
Toronto who sit down and count the cost
of every thought and act." --Daniel Gooch

My text in this article is in the public domain.

David Spiro:
Actually, if you go back to the history of NYC, there was a time
in the 1800's when a "pneumatic tube" system of trains was developed,
though it did not last long.

No, there wasn't. Such a system was *proposed* and promoted by
Alfred Beach. In 1870 he opened a demonstration line about 100 m
long, with one car that shuttled back and forth into a dead-end
tunnel from a single station. Note incidentally that this was the
same year that the cable-hauled Tower Subway opened in London, also
operating a single shuttle-service car, but in this case carrying
passengers between two stations.

Both lines were equally unsuccessful. The Tower Subway shut down
(as a rail operation) in a few months. Beach kept his demonstration
line open a bit longer, but never came close to attracting the
support he'd need to build any more. At one point he gave on up
the politicians he'd originally been associated with and switched to
a different lot, and in an attempt to make this credible, put out the
story that in building the demonstration line he'd had to do it in
secret because he had *no* political backing. This falsehood found
its way into an article of mine, which I will cite in a moment.

Pneumatic tubes of various sizes *were* built in both cities for
non-passenger purposes, i.e. mail and telegrams, and I suppose
David may have had that in mind when he referred to a "system".
For more on this see my article

http://www.davros.org/rail/atmospheric.html

But for the true story about Beach, see the book-length web site

http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/beach/

In the pictures that I have seen of it, they seemed to be about
the same width as the London trains, perhaps a bit smaller.

Quite a bit smaller. I don't think any photos exist of the interior
of Beach's single car, and drawings may not represent the size
accurately. But here are some comparative tunnel diameters:

6'8" Tower Subway
8' Beach's line
10'2" C&SLR (first deep London tube) as originally built
10'8¼" Standard early London tubes (smaller ones were enlarged)
17' Main line single-track tunnel (approximate)
25' Channel Tunnel single-track tunnel
--
Mark Brader | "...Backwards Compatibility, which, if you've made as
| many mistakes as Intel and Microsoft have in the past,
Toronto | can be very Backwards indeed." -- Steve Summit

My text in this article is in the public domain.

"David Spiro" a écrit dans le message de
...
"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
h.li...
I have traveled the London tube, and found it superior in some ways to
NYC, even with its problems, and not as good in others.

Interesting - would you like to expand? We've had at least one thread on
this comparison in the past, but it'd be interesting to hear you
opinions.

Well, for one, I found the London system far easier to navigate than NYC.
I
think that this is in part due to the fact that there is no
"express/local"
service on the Underground, at least not that I am familair with or have
heard of. The express/local idea can be confusing to navigate, even to the
natives! Imagine being a tourist. On the other side of the coin, the
"express/local" type of service that NYC runs is a very efficient way of
moving people around (minus delays, of course) as you can allow for faster
service based on your destination. I don't know that this was easier to
achieve due to the cut-and-cover method, or simply was a brilliant idea at
the time.

The London service also seems to be more expansive in terms of its
coverage
to local neighborhoods. There are too many places in the outer boroughs of
NYC where the only way to reach a subway is to first take a bus. This is
especially true in Queens, less so in Brooklyn and the Bronx. As far as
overall service is concerned, I would be hard pressed to comment, as I am
not a daily commuter in London. I can tell you that in the two times I
have
been there, I had nothing but a fine experience on the Underground. Of
course, back in 1989, I couldn't say the same of the then British Rail,
which really screwed up my travel plans........it was better in 1999, when
I
used GNER, though I don't know how things are these days with all that I
have read.

This means that stations are rather
different in structure, and the tunnels, and thus the trains, are smaller
(i assume because digging wide deep tunnels was ruinously expensive).

Ah, so that explains why the trains were narrower as well. I always
wondered
about that. Actually, if you go back to the history of NYC, there was a
time
in the 1800's when a "pneumatic tube" system of trains was developed,
though
it did not last long. In the pictures that I have seen of it, they seemed
to
be about the same width as the London trains, perhaps a bit smaller.

As nobody has yet mentioned it, I'd like to point out that there's an
excellent unofficial Web site nominally on the NYC Subway - but with a lot
on others, and relevant links too, eg the bibliography at:
http://www.nycsubway.org/biblio/othercities.html .

Also, AFAIK, the typical lack of integration among lines originally intended
to compete with each other is even more pronounced in NYC than in London
where, as has been mentioned, the central tube lines were subsequently
extended into the suburbs along the rights-of-way (if not the tracks) of the
'main-line' railways. , You will see far more stations idenified by the
'double-arrow' symbol indicating interchange with 'National Rail' on the
pocket route map for London than the corresponding symbols for interchange
with PATH, Metro-Rail and the LIRR on the NYC map. Of course, the local
topography may be relevant here.

Finally, after about a century of different fare policies (flat fare in NYC,
distance-based fare stages in London), there now seems to be a convergence
towards a more sophisticated zone-based system with stored-fare cards...

Regards,

- Alan (in Brussels)

Martin Underwood wrote:
"Stuart" wrote in message
news
Martin Underwood wrote:


The Victoria Line was built as recently as 1968-71 and the Jubilee Line
is newer still: the Baker Street to Charing Cross section was 1979 and
the "Jubilee Line Extension" from Green Park to Stratford was completed
as recently as 1999 in preparation for passengers to get to the
Millennium Dome.


Although of course the Jubilee Line extension was decided upon before the
site of the offical Millennium celebrations.


I probably put the cart before the horse there. The fact that the JLE was
going through that peninsular on the south bank of the Thames probably
influenced the choice of the site of the Millennium Dome.

Inded, here was a big campaign to put it (or something like it) in
Birmingham

"Ian Jelf" wrote in message

In message , Tom
Anderson writes
Conversely, London never had the el-to-subway transition that built a
lot of the NYC system (there are one or two examples of this
happening in London, though).

I'll probably kick myself when you answer this.......but where are
there any examples of this happening in London?

How about where the District and Picc climb out of their subsurface and
deep level tunnels at Earl's Court to just below ground level at
Hammersmith and then up a steep gradient on to the viaduct by
Ravenscourt Park? Or where the Wimbledon Line climbs on to a quite high
viaduct in Fulham? And the Central west of White City?

In each of these cases, we have an Underground line climbing from a
tunnel to viaduct level, and staying at viaduct level for at least a few
stations.