New York Groove

The light skim over New York's subway stations continues.  I am available to visit every single station, by the way, if anyone would like to pay my fares and expenses.

Astor Place 6

I got very excited by Astor Place, because of this:

At one point, ironwork entrance points like this were the norm on the Subway.  Based on the Budapest metro, a domed roof indicated the entrance to the station, while skylights showed the exit.  New York pragmatism saw them removed; land is far too valuable on Manhattan for such extravagances.  Only here, at a large intersection, was it allowed to remain.

Except, it's a fake.  It's a reproduction installed in a 1980s refurb.  I didn't realise this until I read a book on the subway when I got back to England, and I was deeply disappointed.  Never mind.

68th Street - Hunter College 6 

A plaque says that Hunter College helped pay for the station's refurbishment.  Presumably that's why they built these tables, for that refectory feel.

86th Street 4,5,6

Spring St 6

More time on the 6.  I'm basically J. Lo.

Borough Hall 2,3 4,5

Brooklyn!

Most of New York's subway was built using cut and cover: the road was ripped up, tracks were laid in the hole, and the road was stuck down again as a lid on the top.  It's cheaper and easier than tunneling, though it's much more inconvenient, and it helps if your city is made up of a lot of very long, very straight avenues.  To cross the rivers, deeper tunnels were required, meaning that at Borough Hall we experienced something unusual on the system: an escalator.

Most of the city's stations are so shallow only a brief flight of steps are required, so when you get an escalator, it's a bit of a thrill.  They've picked a very narrow design though.  I wonder if the MTA didn't trust the famously caustic New Yorkers to stand on the right and let people by on the left.

High St - Brooklyn Bridge A,C

Bedford Avenue L

Hipster Brooklyn!

One interesting ("interesting") feature at Bedford Avenue is a large touchscreen, which relays service information, next train info, and, of course, adverts.  I have to say, the MTA is terrible at providing info once you're down on the platform.  Even something as simple as a next train indicator is a rarity, a real problem when different train services use the same tracks.  They have been very slowly wheeling the indicators out, but there have been all sorts of problems with the system.  Can I suggest they fly over to London and basically copy whatever the Tube does?  No need for whizzy touchscreens, just a few LED lights would help.

Marcy Avenue - J M Z

An elevated subway train!  If you're not thinking of The French Connection right now, then frankly, you're a better man than I.  There used to be elevated trains in Manhattan, but they were unsurprisingly unpopular with the well-off residents and were either driven below ground or replaced with buses.  In the outer boroughs, however, people were just grateful to get any trains, so they've stayed up in the air.

Up on platform level I was thrilled all over again.  I felt very Noo Yawker.

Wall Street 2,3

I'll leave it at that for today.  There are a couple more subway stations which deserve greater attention, plus some other New York transit related stuff, which I'll bore you with another day.

New York City Boy

For a pampered, white, European boy, just stepping into the New York subway system is a thrill.  It makes you feel like some kind of brave adventurer.  Decades of television and film have taught you that nothing good ever happens down there.  It's all muggings and murders and people falling onto the tracks.  Even when it appears in a musical adaptation of the Wizard of Oz, the subway is where Dorothy is trapped and then menaced by a crow-faced peddler whose puppets come to life.  (This actually happened).

Even without the years of cultural indoctrination it'd be hard to conclude that this was a good place to be.  The London Underground is grubby and charming; the Paris Metro is minimalist and a bit clunky.  New York's stations are unfailingly practical.  They were, in the main, built with the minimum of excess.  You can see the structural steel holding up the roof.  All four tracks are on display.  They rarely have station buildings, just open stairwells down from the street.  Even the idea of a "ticket hall" is redundant; in most cases, there's a sort of lobby next to the platform with a single box housing the only member of staff.

As my holiday went on, I began to experience a hitherto unknown emotion: subway fatigue.  Every station just looked the same.  There were slight variations of course; the tiling was different, the layout changed, the colour of the numbers for the line.  They weren't much.  When I crossed over to Brooklyn, there wasn't a radical shift as I passed under the river.  The stations there looked much like the ones in Manhattan.

Going back over my pictures I've had difficulty working out when one station ends and another begins.  I've had to turn to the metadata to check the times the photos were taken because there's no way of knowing otherwise.

As a result, I'll be keeping the station descriptions brief.  Here are the subway stations I visited while I was on holiday.  (Out of respect to the BF, I went hardly anywhere just for the purpose of visiting a station.  Though that's not to say I didn't make him endure some boring transport related shit).

50 Street C,E

The two 50th Street stations are at either end of the same block but don't connect; you have to exit, walk down the street, and enter the new station.  This is what happens when you have two competing private companies (the IRT and the BMT) building the network for you.  Both companies went bust in the 30s and the city had to take them over; luckily we all learned our mistake from that and private companies were never allowed to run a railway ever again.

50th Street 1

This one actually has a Dunkin' Donuts built into the staircase.  I have never had a Dunkin' Donut, even though I am an acolyte of Krispy Kreme (all donations gratefully received).

Alice in Wonderland themed tilework here.

66th Street - Lincoln Center 1

Christopher Street/Sheridan Square 1

Not sure how I ended up in the station by the traditional gay district.  Ahem.

(Are you bored yet?)

South Ferry 1

South Ferry features a "moving platform"; as it's on a curve, there are gaps between the train and the platform.  The moving platforms are hydraulic sections that move forward to fill the gap and allow easy access to the train once it's in the station.

Is that enough, for now?  I think so.  I'll continue in this vein later.  There's a couple that are borderline interesting.

An Englishman In New York

It's been very quiet round here this month.  The first reason for this is I was ill in the first bit of April, meaning a trip to Leeds had to be abandoned.  (It was actually the second time circumstances meant I couldn't visit Cross Gates, making me wonder if someone's trying to tell me something).

The other reason for my absence from this blog is I've been on holiday.  A week in New York.  And you'll be happy to hear I visited loads of stations while I was there, and I'm going to tell you all about them over the next few days.  Consider this a warning.  I'm about to do the 21st Century equivalent of a very long, very tedious slide show all about my holidays.

If this sort of thing is of no interest to you, you probably should go away until about mid-May.  Sorry.

(Photo taken in the Dining Hall of Grand Central Terminal, though the main point of interest is of course the woman dressed as Big Bertha from Renegade in the background)

Ambush Makeover

So.  You've got a fleet of trains that, if they were humans, would be balding and have little pot bellies and would be making "aaaaah" noises every time they sat down.  The polite thing to do would be to send them out to pasture, but you can't afford to replace them.  What to do?

Why, give them a make over!

First Merseyrail applied vinyl to the side of their trains, to make them look peppier.  Now the interiors are getting a new look as well.  I rode on one last week, and I'm happy to report they've been done well.  It's not as radical a change as the one a decade ago - it's purely cosmetic - but it's made the trains feel fresh and bright again.

The new moquette on the seats is very nice.  Yellow and grey, obviously.  Was there ever any doubt?  Big orange strips have been applied to the doors as well, just so you know where to get off.

The most radical improvement is tucked between the seats though.

A bin!  An actual bin!  About time too.  It probably won't make much of a difference - for some reason, Merseyrail's passengers treat their trains like the floor of a cinema; chuck anything down there, someone else will pick it up - but it's nice to see.  If it swallows up just a few of those errant Metros, it's more than paid back the investment.

(Yes, that's two posts about trains in a row.  Don't worry, I'm doing a bit of station collecting later in the week).