Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

THE NEW YORK SUBWAY. 353 Fig. 17.—A SUBWAY TRAIN ON THE MANHATTAN VALLEY VIADUCT. At this point there are three tracks. The middle one carries express trains south in the morning, north in the evening. Their electric motor equipment is remarkably powerful. Each car carries two 200 horse- power motors, weighing no less than three tons apiece. An eight-car express train, containing three trailers and five motor cars, has a power capacity equal to that of the largest passenger train locomotive. The great work of construction sketched in the foregoing engaged hundreds of keen, highly-trained minds in its planning. Yet it was not long completed before Traffic proved imperfect; and that in a most peculiar way : the Subway could not carry as many people as wanted to ride on it. This has created a problem fully as difficult as building the Subway—namely, the problem of increasing its capacity to the utmost. In 1908 the Subway carried over 220,000,000 Congestion. passengers, and on the heaviest days nearly a million. The yearly traffic per mile of single track is (1,408) 23 just thrice that of either the London Tube railways or the Chicago elevated lines. This spells congestion. An easy way to improve this condition would be to put more cars on each train, if the station platforms were not too short to permit this. The convergence of the tracks at either end of the Longer jI os island platforms unfortunately prevents lengthening the platforms. This is the fault of the designers, of course ; but at the time they did their work it was not thought that anything longer than eight-car trains would ever be required. Reconstruction with a view to lengthening the express plat- forms was begun in 1909, in order that ten-car trains may be run. The only other solution available is to run trains closer together. But this is almost impossible. Ono of the obstacles is a com- plicated double crossover at 96th Street (where the line forks to east and north), VOL. n.