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Happy 110th Birthday, IRT!


7LineFan

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Thanks everyone!

 

Kewl. I wish they would bring out Arnines tomorrow, the day I actually go on the god damn subway on a day of significance is the day they decide NOT to bring out cars that I like...

Except that they wouldn't fit.

 

It's the 100th anniversary of the IRT, and the Arnines are IND cars, so they wouldn't be appropriate anyways. You'll get your chance after Thanksgiving if they run them for the Sunday holiday specials.

 

A shame that the most crowded lines in the system happen to use the smallest cars too.

 

Damn IRT... imagine if they built it to BMT and IND standards. The capacity increase and crowd alleviation would be a life saver...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think August Belmont and co. simply used the width of the railcars of the time, and that the BMT made their cars wider to compete with the IRT. Of course the IRT is more crowded because they were there first, which means they got first dibs on the convenient locations!

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Thanks everyone!

 

Except that they wouldn't fit.

 

It's the 100th anniversary of the IRT, and the Arnines are IND cars, so they wouldn't be appropriate anyways. You'll get your chance after Thanksgiving if they run them for the Sunday holiday specials.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think August Belmont and co. simply used the width of the railcars of the time, and that the BMT made their cars wider to compete with the IRT. Of course the IRT is more crowded because they were there first, which means they got first dibs on the convenient locations!

 

Actually Belmont kept standard gauge (distance between rails on tracks) the same - 4'8.5" but modified the cars to be skinner on purpose so if the subway system was a commercial failure as a passenger railroad, a freight interest couldn't buy the track and use it to move freight around since their cars would not fit in the narrower tunnels.

 

Remember the IRT was being spec'd out as a heavy rail subway system at a point in time where other such systems simply did not exist. The Boston subway (oldest parts of the green line) was hardly comparable since it was always light rail. Though other cities' systems opened earlier, remember during the design phase they weren't available as a blueprint yet, so the financiers of the original subway in New York had no past precedent to guarantee their success in doing so.

 

Hence why later designs under the dual contracts, BRT/BMT subway, and later IND were not built to the narrower standard.

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