
Video reveals NYC subway ride 108 years ago from Union Square to Grand Central - jamesbritt
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/video-reveals-108-year-old-subway-ride-article-1.1412802
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jballanc
As a (former) regular rider of the NYC subway, the thing that strikes me the
most is just how _short_ the platforms all are!

Anyone who's ever had to turn an MVP into something that can serve millions of
requests will appreciate some of the history of the MTA. At almost every
station along the old IRT lines, you can pick out the boundaries of the "old"
stations and where the platforms were later extended. As the article mentions,
this was also the reason for the closing of some of the stations. For example
the 91st St. station was closed because 96th St. was extended exclusively to
the south, adding a new entrance between 92nd and 93rd St. (not much sense in
having two station entrances one block apart).

Another related fun bit of trivia... If you've ever wondered why some NYC
subway lines have numbers and some have letters, the numbers are the old IRT
lines while the letters are the old BMT/IND lines. Both sets of lines use the
same gauge (width of the actual rails), but the BMT/IND lines had wider cars.
Since the stations had to be built to the width of the cars and not the gauge
of the track, even today you can't run the letters on the numbers or vice
versa.

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betterunix
You can actually run the IRT cars on BMT/IND tracks, it would just be awkward
for passengers. Maintenance trains (e.g. the garbage collector train, the
trains used for trackwork, etc.) often use retired IRT cars for things like
motive power or transporting equipment for that very reason: they can go on
any line.

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rayiner
In this vein, one of the grandest bits of NYC train porn are pictures of Penn
Station before they demolished it and built the soggy basement that is called
Penn Station today:
[http://www.nypap.org/sites/default/files/penn_station.jpg](http://www.nypap.org/sites/default/files/penn_station.jpg)

~~~
terhechte
In a similar train of thought, Central Station was about to be demolished,
too, and got saved literally the last minute:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Central_Terminal#Proposa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Central_Terminal#Proposals_for_demolition_and_towers)

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clicks
Reminds me of this video:
[http://www.wimp.com/sanfrancisco/](http://www.wimp.com/sanfrancisco/) \--
uninterrupted San Francisco footage from 1905. Very surreal, extremely
captivating.

~~~
dualogy
Wow this is amazing.. they used to have emergent / "chaotic" traffic patterns
back then in the west, the likes of which you only find in (much of) Asia,
Africa or India these days.

And how agile, vivid and alert most everyone is in the streets! Quite
remarkable -- truly people were a different breed back then, for better or
worse.

~~~
rexreed
Notice no traffic lights, stop signs! Also note the conspicuous absence of
women in this video and also car steering wheels on the right! In fact, I'm
surprised there are so many cars on the road in 1905!

~~~
cli
There are women in the video, although not as many as there are men. For
example, you can see two women at the 35 second mark at the right side of the
screen, and another near the left side of the screen at the 1:35 mark. There
are more, but these are just two that show them clearly in the foreground.

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kyro
Reminds me more of the London tube stations than any of the NYC subway
stations of today, likely due to a combination of respect and lack of bodily
waste/trash.

I ride the NYC subway every day and am always surprised at how poorly the
stations are treated. People throw wrappers on the tracks so calmly and
confidently as if they were designated to collect waste. Puddles of urine are
not uncommonly found. It baffles me. I don't know where that attitude comes
from.

~~~
w1ntermute
New York in general is just dirty. It's a place to visit, not to live in.

~~~
duaneb
Reality is dirty. I love it here in NYC.

~~~
w1ntermute
No, reality in NYC is dirty. The rest of the country isn't. It's always amazed
me how New Yorkers think their city of 8 million defines a country of 330
million.

~~~
duaneb
It doesn't at all define america, but the rest of the country is literally
built on dirt. May as well embrace it. Maybe it's because I grew up in the
country but living on a garbage pile doesn't really phase me after poking at
animal carcasses in my childhood.

~~~
w1ntermute
There's a whole lot of difference between soil and trash, even if both can
also be referred to as "dirt".

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gus_massa
In Buenos Aires (Argentina) we used the same wood railcars for 99 years in the
first subway line of the city "Subte A". We changed all of them this January
and the last day was a big event.

Some trains in use:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot1Lzgiy13s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot1Lzgiy13s)

Professional edited video:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEoFmGMkRlY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEoFmGMkRlY)

Inside the train in the last travel:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L_G6WTL2nQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L_G6WTL2nQ)

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Retric
What really struck me was the lack of those those safety bumps and lights on
the ground near the edge of the platform. It's such a basic part of what I
think of as a subway platform but clearly took a while before they showed up.

~~~
skeletonjelly
No yellow safety line! The madness of it all

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apinstein
You know what strikes me most about that video? The tunnels and supports are
so clean! Very cool.

~~~
InclinedPlane
The subway was only months old at the time.

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nateberkopec
Is that some sort of lighting rig on a parallel track? Is there any more
information about how this film was made? Seems like a pretty big achievement
for the time.

~~~
greenyoda
It looks like it was shot from another train that was following the pictured
one. There may have been additional lighting, but the train could have just
been illuminated by the headlights of the train behind it.

~~~
leviathant
There is a third train running parallel to the train that is ahead of the
camera train, throughout the entire trip. It almost looks like it has an array
of fluorescent tubes or mercury vapor lamps.

Sometimes the train with the lighting rig gets a little bit ahead of its
subject, which is why the train being filmed gets dark from time to time, but
you can see this rig clearly at the beginning, and towards the end, the camera
train pulls close enough that you can see the staff on the lighting rig train
walking about its platform.

~~~
conorgil145
You can clearly see the third train providing lighting at 3:10. Very
interesting.

~~~
greenyoda
It looks like the third train is pulling some kind of open car behind it that
has the lights mounted on it. At about 3:50, you can see a guy step from this
rig into the back door of the train that's pulling it.

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greenyoda
A good view of people on the platform starts at about 4:20.

~~~
noonespecial
I'm not sure if its an artifact of the camera, a result of their clothes or
something cultural but its fascinating to watch them walk.

The men especially all _walk differently_ than people today. Their posture and
demeanor is almost alien. Its almost like they're all walking down an
invisible incline.

~~~
gojomo
I could believe that gait/pace/posture vary by culture, region, and era... as
with say diction and relative prevalence of different facial expressions. Even
if you removed the cues of dress and surroundings, you might be able to watch
video of walkers from different cities and tell New Yorkers from others, or at
least large cities vs. small towns, etc. And just seeing how much more
formally dressed city dwellers once were, in public - different clothes
require a different style of motion and imply a different intended
presentation to others.

But, I suspect artifacts of the filming and conversion to modern formats are
larger factors. Slight differences in replay speed, or cyclical variations
caused by either the original machinery or compromises of framerate
conversion, could also lead to the kind of 'alien-ness' we perceive.

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someKindOfName
Given that they did not have "video" back then (in the sense of electronically
captured image data, whether digital or analog), isn't this really "footage"?

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oakaz
It looks pretty clean and delicately built. I wish we behaved it good.

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visarga
What strikes me the most is how similar they are to us.

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iwantatophat
I envy the time when everyone is wearing a suite and a tophat with an awesome
mustasche, aswell as acting like a true gentlemen.

~~~
greensand
looking at all those people, thinking how each is busy with their day, their
plans, their hopes - then realizing all of them had already lived their lives
and died, including the odd child also in the video... Nothing deep to say -
this can be said about every old media showing people - just for some reason,
perhaps the portrayed routine, this made me reflect on that fact

~~~
sultezdukes
I've thought about that watching old movies from even as late as the '30s -
that every single person I'm watching (scenes with 10s if not hundreds of
people) are long dead.

~~~
Patrick_Devine
Every time I watch old films or start pondering mortality I then think of life
longevity augmentation which is probably going to happen in the next 40-50
years (if not sooner) and then wonder if a. I'll live that long, and b. what a
shame it is all those people are dead.

Then I start thinking of all the differences we'll have when longevity comes
about, such as being able to travel intergalactic distances, declining birth
rates, and placing a higher price on the human life. It's an interesting
thought exercise.

