New York’s Fake Buildings - Secret Sub-Stations (the story behind them) IT'S HISTORY
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- Опубліковано 26 чер 2024
- Christopher Payne said it best in his book about New York Cities Sub-stations and fake buildings:
“All over New York City, hidden behind unassuming historic facades, sits the gigantic machinery of the power stations that once moved the subways. For over a century, the 125,000-pound converters and related equipment of the substations remained largely unchanged, but in 1999 the last manually operated substation was shut down and since then they have been systematically dismantled and sold as scrap”.
» SOURCES
Christopher Payne - New York's Forgotten Substations: The Power Behind the Subway
Library of Congress
Video Chapters:
00:00 - Introducing the Sub-Stations of New York
01:20 - What powers New Yorks subway network?
02:10 - How electricity works (AC / DC)
02:30 - Why were Sub-Stations needed
04:00 - The first electric street car (Richmond, VA)
05:29 - Work dangers in the Sub-Stations
07:54 - Hiding the Sub-stations throughout New York
08:38 - Design of the Sub-Stations
10:07 - The abandonment of the sub-stations
12:05 - The last working Sub-Station
12:41 - What happened to the New York Sub-Stations?
13:17 - What remains of the sub-stations?
» ABOUT US
IT’S HISTORY - Weekly tales of American Urban Decay as presented by your host Ryan Socash.
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» NOTICE
Some images may be used for illustrative purposes only - always reflecting the accurate time frame and content.
Hi… former New York Transit Museum employee here… again…
I have to point out that a lot of the sub stations your talking about are still in active service, just using the solid state rectifiers.
In fact, I’ve been inside the the one on 53rd street.
The application of power to the system still has to take place at the same levels, so they can’t just abandon these buildings outright.
In fact, honestly, they’ve had to build MORE of them.
Those that have been completely abandoned are mostly because they were built for elevated lines that have been demolished.
Also, the transit authority sold the BMT and IRT power stations, but never the sub stations. The IND lines always took power from Con-Ed.
Con-Ed still uses the IRT faculties, mostly for the steam system, while the BMT power station near the Brooklyn Navy Yard was closed and demolished.
That’s helpful, thanks!
are they used as backups?
Thanks for the info. But with the advancement of modern technology, you would think NYC would have needed LESS power stations and not MORE?
@@christianfreedom-seeker934 there are more stations. More technology
@@christianfreedom-seeker934 How so? the electric motors still require the same power, and the equipment has more equipment drawing power which more than offsets the savings from using solid state motor controls.
These buildings look like the entrance of an MIB headquater.
Ya, I think that was the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel Ventilation Building
@@KennethStone You're right. Thought they all look like they can pass for one. 😁
@@KennethStone The tunnel's midway ventiliation building on Governor's Island always reminded me of Uncle Scrooge's Money Bin - all it needs is a giant dollar sign carved into its facade.
😎 ...shhhhh
Lol it is I can't wait till they tell us the truth.
Beautiful video. I love your mentioning of all the people who work behind the scenes to keep every day life comfortable. I work in a 100 year old water filtration plant, no one knows what the building is when they drive past it and no one has any idea what we do. The plant runs 24/7 and always is staffed. There’s only 7 of us to serve a community of 30,000. It’s a lot of work, but water is essential for life. It’s nice to get some recognition because nobody ever thinks about the people behind the scenes. Thank you sir.
There is one of those in the 70's movie "Marathon Man" w/Dustin Hoffman & Sir Laurence Olivier . The end of the movie shows the inside of 1 of the water treatment plants (Near a reservoir ?) When I saw this I had no idea that this kinda stuff was there . Is that where U work ?
@@j.richards2346 I'd have to see the movie for sure to see what they do, but I'll say many treatment plants use the same methods so the plant in that movie might not be too different then the one I work in. My specific plant has never been in a movie lol
@@j.richards2346 Actually just looked it up. The water plant in the film wasn't a real plant. It was a large set piece built specific for the movie. Looks cool but doesn't look anything like where I work lol.
That's a great movie ! "Eeese eet safe"?
i am a maintainer in the power department for the mta and some of the old equipment like the rotors are still there intact. amazing to see after all that time. a piece of history
I think defunct fire/police stations in NYC is pretty interesting, closed elevated railways that have since been removed, highways that are no longer there.
A number of those long defunct fire/police stations have been converted to residential or small operations. Columbus Ave used to have an elevated, thus the abnormally wide Avenue (it turned right along 110th street, then cut left…you can see how wide the street is as they had to accommodate for the elevated above). Just a few bits to share
I like when they find a way to repurpose. I think it’s NY that turned an old elevated railway into a green walk/run pathway.
@@LotsofLisa Bethlehem pa did that with an elevated rail for the steel mill
NYC still has some elevated portions of her subway line. Back in either the 1930’s or 1940’s NYC began merging certain elevated sections with the subway. Boston MA had this “mixed system” until a few years ago. Chicago, amazingly still runs an actual Elevated, the last in the country. Not sure how long it will be running for, since people with investment savvy and money have been fleeing the city because of the crime and corruption.
@@christianfreedom-seeker934 Some? i would say 75% of NYC subways are elevated and they are not going anywhere ! bronx, Brooklyn queens and upper manhatan all run above the ground elevated.
I love how 19th century substations have a higher quality of building construction than the mansions being built nowadays for billionaires. People are so afraid to put money into anything nowadays, but they don't realize it's far more expensive to build something cheaply and have to demolish and rebuild it every 10-20 years than it is to build something that will last 100 years with little to no repairs.
Very cool, lots of amazing photos I've never seen!
I do wanna point out that most of the "abandoned" substations shown here are still fully operational with modern rectifiers or serving some other NYCT function, that's why you still see the signage. Substations in 2021 do the same thing they always did - turn high voltage alternating current into 600V direct current - the equipment just works a little differently. 100 year old subway cars can still run off power from a brand new substation, and 100 year old rotary converters could still power the newest subway cars.
I loved it when the transportation museum would bring out the old 1920's trains once or twice a year. You felt like you were stepping back in time. Ceiling fans, rattan seats, and leather commuter straps!
@@scottjohnson5415 some modern day trains still use leather straps. They are effective
I'm an engineer, and sometimes we *still* check high voltage connections with a stick! lol Nowadays it's usually a relatively safe fiberglass stick though...
Psh, just do it with a piece of rebar. Make sure to not wear gloves for extra grip.
@@startedtech Ha ha ;-)
I'm a retired Broadcast Engineer. I've had to stand inside a transmitter with a thick nylon rod to aligning the interstage coupling on a live TV transmitter. I had to bypass the safety interlocks and stand on the HV transformer that supplied the Plate voltage while it was powered up. Then I made the adjustments and waited for it to be shut down, the for an operator to use the shorting stick to discharge the HV capacitors before it was safe to step out.
Used to work on mainframe computers back in the 80's, and we used to use chicken sticks to discharge the filter HV capacitors so we can work on the power supplies.
@@tmfu We had a Vital Industries Squeeze Zoom special effects video processor at WACX TV. The +5 power supply was 1000A, linear regulated monster. No need to discharge it. The banks of 1K RAM quickly took care of that.
Here in Philly there are power substations along the Delaware river that were only in use for maybe 20 or 30 years until they became obsolete. They're so big and were built so well that they haven't been knocked down & even after zero maintainence aren't close to falling down. Even though they were built to provide power for lighting they were built with huge skylight roofs made out of wrought iron & glass. They were works of art themselves.
That's for philly electric. They're generating stations not traction power substations
The individuals responsible for this, along with the mad men who built all of NYCs bridges(!) helped make my life growing up in Brooklyn immensely easier, and their work is absolutely incredible. And for that.. I thank them.✊💯
I think they’re dead
@@jaderhuff81
dude...
@@warehousejo007 doood 😔
@@jaderhuff81 yeah 😑
Ottawa has some of these. some are for electricity, some are Bell phone equipment. the electrical ones were probably originally built for Ottawa's street car system, which was dismantled in 1959, but now house substations for the city electrical grid.
there are other remnants of the street car system witthin the old city boundaries, including a street car pole in the form of a rail sticking straight up out of the sidewalk on Bronson Ave, and the last station at the end of the line, at Britannia Beach (cottage country back then, another section of city now) is now a picnic shelter.
“Doused with oil quickly” no- it is submerged in oil- and that was a photo of a transformer not a ‘circuit breaker’
I liked the "arches of electricity" verbiage. Yes, electricity can be your arch-enemy.
Yeah video is not very accurate, but it was still dangerous work, and under appreciated.
Both AC and DC are subject to voltage drop. With AC the voltage can be corrected with a transformer. With DC, in those times, the only way to correct the voltage was with a motor generator set. The main reason for using DC in traction applications was that it was relatively easy to control the speed of the electric motors. Until the advent of high power electronics it was quite difficult to control the speed of an AC motor.
I lived across the street from the 143rd street sub station. Never knew what wass there, we did used to see trucks occasionally go in and out. Thanks for solving the lifelong mystery for me
Lol the steam engine wasn't the only thing choking the city with fumes back then. Every building burned coal for heating back then
So don't act like it was just the elevated steam train.
Exactly. Had they continued to use steam engines the steam would've likely been produced by something other than coal. Steam engines are perfectly clean by themselves
i think the problem is that the steam might help to create low--lying smog, which can be deadly, especially from dirty coal furnaces.
And they only had a few steam engines, then moved to hundreds of electric street cars lol I guess localizing pollution to one point in the city was a better trade off but I bet dollars to donuts the power plants coal consumption was way higher than the steam engines
@@kingjellybean9795 coal fired power plants are a kind of steam engine.
Not coal steam, water steam. Totally clean. Still heavily in use today. Cogeneration and trigeneration.
Thank you, This IS A FANTASTIC documentry. There is a book New Yorks Forgotten Substations. It is a very good book but an actual documentry is so much better. I have been into the trolleys and subways since I was a kid (62 now). Many people just pay their fare and take the ride, not realizing what is behind the ride. This is very well put together and presented. Keep up the great work!!!!!!
My favorite is on Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn near the Promenade. It's a brownstone, identical to every other one on the block. When you get close and can look through a slat, you realize it's hollow and there is (was?) a huge dynamo in there.
I’ve fell in love with our substations when I first learned about them in the late 90s. The one on 96th always stood out to me because it’s not far from where I live and the high voltage signs were interesting to see as a kid. There are several others by me no longer in use and several others that have been bought out and repurposed. In downtown Brooklyn (not where I live but where I am often) there is a subway building that looks like a standard townhouse. Pretty cool.
Same here!
“Blowing unspeakable pollution”… what a ridiculous observation. Modern day sensibilities being projected back in time to 100 years earlier when the coal and wood fired steam locomotives would have been the norm and necessary for the city’s continued growth.
"SHARE SHARE SHARE, SMASH THE BELL, SUBSCRIBE" :) A quick note to those of you all worked up about my pronunciation of “facades”, as well as other mistakes in this video, past videos, and future ones.
“You got me! I messed up! OHH THE SHAME”
Only if I get cookie
Ok
A lot of these "downright terrifying" methods are still used today. Synchroscopes are still a thing, and yes, if you're too far mis-matched from the grid big bangs happen. Big arcs still happen at substations today. I worked in a building where we pro-actively switched over to generator before thunderstorms or other threats. You could tell which engineer was at the controls by how much the building shook during the change-over. The old-timers would do it almost imperceptibly. The "kids" would cause the building to shake with a sold thud as all of the mechanical motors and transformers got slammed with a frequency mis-match.
I work in these places sometimes and I’m amazed at how hidden they are
WOW! Very cool that you have access.
Fascinating look at hidden urban infrastructure. There are similar false façade buildings in London and Paris, hiding ventilation shafts for the subway.
Oddly that's the first thought I had coming into this video as well.
I think Toronto, Ontario has fake buildings to hide power stations of some sort as well.
Thank you for this journey back in time. Though I've never had a chance to see New York heritage by myself, I'm still amazed!
As for me, I'd love to see an episode about Chelsea Piers!
One of the most fascinating videos I’ve seen - I’m hitting that like button. As a retired Light Rail Operator in PDX, I can attest to the fact that sub stations have lost their soul. Ours are small, windowless boxes. NY had such class!
Thank you for this incredibly interesting little detail about NYC. In my city Toronto I wonder what little details are hiding in plain sight.
It’s impressive in how well you can articulate you’re thoughts. I’m sure it’s a script, but I couldn’t do that on a script. These videos are truly art.
Fella is seriously confusing "machinist" for a machine operator.... not the same thing buddy
Was well worth the wait!
Lofts in the Meatpacking District now fetch high sums as residences. Couldn't similar conversions be made of these handsome and robust structures?
You have to get past the notorious New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) first.
You heard him talking about dousing arcs with oil? The oil and other contaminants are still in those buildings and they are toxic. The cost to remediate the pollutants enough to make them safe for human habitation can often be too high.
@@LuciaFiero Understood. Many thanks for this information!
@L Tchort It's either ultra expensive luxury or "low income". God forbid they construct housing for the middle class.
@@LuciaFiero pcb hell
Anyone who tagged on subway trains back in the early 80's already knew about
the fake buildings.
MTA substation 13 still exists on W 53rd street and still has its Westinghouse rotary converter still installed and partially operational. Now instead of generating DC to run the subway, it can take power from the third rail, and then the DC side of the rotary converter can be run as a DC motor.
the substation shares a back wall with the CBS Ed Sullivan theater (The back of the stage is about 12 feet from the converter). When the station was in full operation the large magnetic fields produced by the rotary converter would interfere with the cameras which were tube-based cameras that used magnetic deflection to make the TV picture. In the B&W days, the problem was fairly easy to solve by wrapping the large Image Orthicon tube in the camera with a MuMetal shielding. But when the theater was upgraded to color it was found that the entire camera had to be wrapped in MuMetal and there were still problems with the standard Philips/Norelco camera that CBS was using elsewhere so they used Marconi cameras instead which had a large machined metal plate at the front that the tube assembly attached to, that along with MuMetal shielding placed inside the cabinet allowed them to use those cameras and go to color.
Thank you for being a big channel and not spreading fake info like others
that end note w the comparison to the internet was FLAMESSS
Dude ! I love this stuff!! You really nail it!!
No, he doesn't. But the list as to why is WAY to long for a comment section...
2:19 "AC and DC make up the vast majority of electrical systems". What other electrical systems are there? UC? Unknown Current, or what???
WC for water current?
Wi Fi bro 😉
@@davidroddini1512 wifi is NOT comparable with AC and DC
I had to check it twice, but at the 1:45 mark you pronounce “facade” as fuh-saayd.
I had to go back too. Who pronounces it like that?? 😂😂
@@pizzabae69 it’s ok to make mistakes, no reason to laugh.
7:45 they pronounce "arc's" as 'arches'. Like wtf...
The closing statement here was absolutely on point.
Worked for 28 years for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority. My job was to work in the various traction power substation they have for the Market/Frankford sub/el line and the Broad Street Subway. Some dating back to the early 20th century. The older ones blended in better then the newer ones.
The first electric streetcar in America might have been in Richmond Virginia but U.S were rather late to adopt the electric tram. The first electric trams were installed near St Petersburg, Russia in 1875. In 1881 the fist commercially successful electric tram line opened in Lichterfelde outside Berlin, Germany. In 1883 a two kilometer line opened in Brighton, U.K remaining in service to this day and is now the oldest operating electric tramway in the world. Also opened in 1883 was the earliest tram system in the Americas which was installed in Toronto, Canada.
Baltimore had the first streetcars but they entirely ripped out their system in the 20th Century (late)
WTF is a tram? Aren't we talking about the subway? The NYC subways were in operation long before they were electrified. And we only know kilometers from watching the Olympics or James Bond movies on tv.
@@nastybastardatlive Did you actually watch the video or did you just scroll straight down to the comments? Just in case you missed it: 4:00 What is called a "streetcar" in the United States is called a tram in much of the rest of the world.
Same for Kilometers. Once again used everywhere but 3 countries, including USA.
good data, good research
Those of Us *_Native New Yawkerz_* mostly always knew what those buildings were for despite them blending into to the rest of the city's surrounding buildings.
Someone like You, from say, Idaho or Nebraska, is like: *_"Gasp ... Oh Golly gee those buildings are fantastic. Wow that's awesome they're substations??!!_*
I really enjoy this type of topic you did a great job in this video thank you so much please keep em coming!
Hey I just want to say that this is really well written. I learned a lot and I really love the ending. It's true, we look back at times of the past saying how could they live like that. In the future, we'll be the people they say that about. Thanks for making this :)
I appreciate the mention of how toxic social media platforms are, by design. Rather than being platforms to connect us, they're platforms to entrap us, to keep us there so they can show us targeted ads.
Yes, and I am part of a major paradox.
@@ITSHISTORY I'd like to think you're using the platform for good though, not just feeding us gruel content to waste our time
I visited though not actually being allowed in) with one of the workers in Brooklyn not too far from the promenade on the East River. He showed me the light that dimmed and brightened as he was adjusting the phase the frequency was NOT 60Hz, but the original frequencythat Nikola Tesla (the man, not the car from Ion Musk!) hadworked with, 25 Hz. The Pennsey electrified NEC also was 25 Hz, both ran on 11 kV. The direct current would come out at the substation via a rotary converter (later like today a solid state rectifier) at the common transport voltage of 600 DC. This to supply the third rails of the system and the catenary of the Pensylvania Railroad. Today the MTA run by the State of New York, everything is solid state computerised today of course. I got on the tail end of having a chance to see and hear these mechanical RCs at work!
They actually do a similar thing in California. Oil wells that were there before urban development are disguised and hidden by buildings. Very cool.
If you know any urbexers it'd be great if they took inside and outside pictures if they are abandoned
@@kanedaku if you look up for example “The Packard Well Site” “Cardiff Tower” “Beverly Center Oil Well” and “The Tower Of Hope Oil Rig” you will see probably some of the most interesting examples. I know that for sure one of them is no long producing but to my knowledge the other three are. The packard well site actually contains 52 producing oil wells, the Beverly center holds 54 wells, and the Cardiff tower holds 40 wells. If you know anything about the O&G industry then you know wells need maintenance. It’s actually remarkable because the Cardiff tower, and Packard well site both have derricks built in that are on tracks that can move around to service the wells. Sorry for the long post. It’s very fascinating.
There was no 'Electronics' in the '1800s. First came Radio, then Electronics in the '40s with the advent of RADAR and Television. developed during WW-II in the MIT Radiation Labs. A syncroscope was a set of light bulbs rated at twice the Alternator's output voltage at the power plant. They were connected between the Alternator(s) that were in use. You adjusted the speed of the next one to be added, until it was slowly changing brightness. When the lamps were at their minimum brightness, they were switched on line. Then the power was ramped up to the required level to have it producing the required current. There was no need to have identical sized Alternators in each section, but it did make it simpler to balance. If you've ever been on a remote military base with unstable power generation, you'll appreciate what it's like in a big area with a power grid with proper communications between power plants.
All electric motors are Alternating Current. The commutator and carbon brushes convert DC into crude AC by chopping it to produce the required changing magnetic fields.
I will not share a video with so many mistakes.
This was very cool. Thanks for making this. I have never been to New York but now would like to go more than ever. Great stuff!
I love your channel man! My grandma used to work in the retail/garment trade in NYC.
Richmond DID NOT invent the electric street car. Scranton, Pennsylvania did. That's why it's called the Electric City. Not sure how you didn't find that in your research. It's a relatively well-known fact.
He didn't say Richmond invented the electric street car. He said they were the first to install a successful system, and that is what the New York system was patterned after.
@@thomascalton3067 it didn't though. Scranton did. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre housed the most dense accumulation of railroad trackage in the entire world. Two El Trains, 5 regional and national passenger train stations, over 100 trolley lines, dozens of freight rail routes, and hundreds of independent rails owned by coal companies, all in less than 200 square miles, and all before 1900. It is one of the most historic places in America. It birthed the Industrial Revolution, first Woolworths, first Rite-Aid, first urban park, first jazz festival, all international firsts, mind you. In the 19th and early twentieth centuries, they were two of the largest and richest cities in the country, yet whenever UA-cam historians offhandedly mention these things, they just vaguely happened "somewhere in Pennsylvania".
@@quenoselecruzenadie it is, and there's a trolley museum in the same complex, where you could ride a 100-year-old trolley on Scranton's last operating line.
This stuff always fascinated me, it's amazing how far we have come and how much pride went into things then
As a KGB agent, I'm petting my cat while watching this and taking notes....
I think you need to do a bit more reasearch before blindingly blaming the few steam locomotives for the cities problems. You do know if a engineer is good at their job the smoke from a locomotive is nearly non exsistant. Unlike those 100K + coal burning furnaces and those wood burning fires that nearly every single building used. Not to mention the factories use to be located in the city back then which also spewed up coal burned fires.
Engineers of the past...you did well. Great job
Well presented! An attractive video for history buffs. Thank-you
Well presented? Maybe... Factually right? Not so much...
What a great video! I love this stuff about NYC. I rode the old subway cars that had the porthole windows. I loved seeing those big, black, electric locomotives pulling trains over the Hell Gate bridge, past the huge electric sign that showed coke burning with a blue flame. NYC is dull now. I subscribed as I see you have lots of interesting videos.
Nice piece,
I definitely love the nyc subway system,
It’s always awesome to hear about it 👍,
Many thanks for your video piece
Absolutely beautiful!! Great video!!
Wow!!! I did not expect a comparison with early electricity to modern internet / social media. Well done and a much need point to be made 👍
17:02 That's some profound analogous thoughts at the end.
I didnt know there was anything other than AC or DC. Learn something new every day.
Your content is A+
I swear that one substation you showed a couple times looked just like the firehouse from Ghostbusters. lol
Con Edison in NYC provides gas and electricity, and they also provide steam in the winter for the old skyscrapers. The steam plants are also housed in these disguised buildings.
11:08 "A vast, underfunded headache" is the best description I've heard for it yet.
Fascinating video 👍
Amazing. This is the 4th time I’ve watched this ep alone.
Last comment- have you ever SEEN a Mercury arc rectifier in person? That shit is incredible
tell it bro ☺
I lived and worked in Stanford White's 1892 "Cable building" on Broadway and Houston St., it was the power station for the Metropolitan street railway company who had their offices directly above my 7th floor corner loft. It has a basement and 2 sub-basements, there were four 1200 hp Corliss steal engines in there, powered by at least 11 high pressure Heine coal fired boilers. There was a 32 foot driving wheel that weighed 105 tons. The cable was pulled around the circuit under the street and it was constantly breaking down, after a few years the line was electrified and the driven cable removed, some time around then every piece of machinery, including 8 of the boilers, the dynamo that was said could power 5,000 incandescent light bulbs and powered the building's electric lights were all removed and scrapped. No trace of it remained by 1978. The upper floors were rented out for offices, stores and business use.
It was the only cable car power plant of it's kind- the San Francisco line is not powered the same way, so it was unique, had it been mothballed and kept intact it would have been an amazing museum. There was an intact, working original freight elevator on the Houston st side at the ground floor level that only went to the basement, it was powered by a water pump system and about a 500 gallon water tank.
Well done! Thank you!
I lived next to the 58th station for 10 years. Great to see someone who appreciates design. You might want to pick up 1000 New York Buildings.
Best from NYC.
Would love to see a video on how the actual subway was built!! Not to mention railways in general.. Surveying and leveling out all that land with horse and buggy and wooden cranes is unthinkable in our times. Thanks for the vid.
I had to stop the video to say that this is a great quality job. Thanks
The substations are still there and operating. Static nearly maintenance free rectifiers are used, which are remote controlled. Actually all transit systems and railways have substations with rectifiers.
"All transit systems have substations with rectifiers"
One big OOOF....
A lot of urban metro and streetcar systems have rectifiers, yes. But looking around the world I can guarantee you that most railways, especially newer build ones are using AC...
@@sethanix3969 .... yes, correct, only DC systems have rectifiers in the substation, but also all AC systems have substations, where the juice of the transmission line is converted to the OHE voltage.
Hey mate, ya said 19,000 volts instantly kills a person, I was lubricating a scissor lift when the platform wax raised into a 19kva powerline. I de energised the line taking all 3 hits of the 19kva. I lost both legs and 30% of my skin and a few more muscles but I did survive it. I’m the only person tk do so. Thankyou for the awesome video mate well done.
I'm from Richmond and you can still take tours from the old trolley cars. Love that city for its history
At 3:50 you said that the steam locomotives heavy polluted the city but the same number of people in cars instead pollutes the air way more
They're not in cars though, they're on electric trains.
@@ezramax1643 you’re missing the point
No, coal smoke is WAY WORSE than auto pollution.
@@christianfreedom-seeker934 who said anything about coal because at that time the majority of locomotives were wood burning and also let’s say that theoretically we have a train with 4 train cars that are filled to max capacity of 50 people per train car well that’s 200 people and let’s say that half of them can drive and have access to a car well that’s 100 cars on the road well 50 people per train car is a realistic amount so let’s put the number of train cars to a realistic number at the time of 10 well that’s 500 people at maximum capacity and let’s say that half of them have can drive and have access to a car that’s 250 cars and let’s take it 1 step further let’s say of those 250 cars 10% of them are electric that’s still 225 cars polluting the air now the average American type steam locomotive from that time was aloud to puts out 500 ppm of co2 max while the average car puts out 400 ppm and you do the math from here
What a great channel keep making great content
@1:43, I pass by that building every other day on Pike street and always wondered what the function it served. It's currently a haven for graffiti and now I know its true purpose.
So very fascinating
Thanks guys that was great 👍
I am a history lover, & I just came across your channel, really awesome content! New Sub right here!
Welcome aboard! I am not a historian - more of a curious mind :)
@@ITSHISTORY That's the best kind to have! :)
Great video!
the thing i cared about most in this video is finding out how ac/dc got its name
edit: he also said "among us" at 9:50
A substation was used as home of the MIB in the Men in Black movie series. Subways began as Steam Locomotive pulled trains in 1885 with a train breaking down and that's why NYC has maintenence tunnels today. If they said they went through it, I'd say it goes without saying that the fatal death wasn't theirs.
I spent years working in NY, NY and never saw this and did wonder, " What is --- DOWN-UNDER!!! Well done "" BIBLICALLY RESEARCHED " report!!🤠
Steam tunnels. Also spaces with former uses that have been converted. The variety present in the use of current structures. Jane Jacobs noted the relevance of mixed usage in buildings and neighborhoods. You might have to ... Jacobs is an endless subject as you must know, more Jane please!
14:26 Sad News. The old Substation on 264 West 96st between Broadway and West End Ave was torn down this year. Most likely to make room for more overpriced NYC Luxury apartments.
AWESOME VIDEO COULD YOU DO A VIDEO ON THE OLD GRAND TRAIN STATIONS
rare i get a quality video posted only hours ago in my feed
One section of the video repeats itself making the video longer than it should be.
Many early oil circuit breakers had a nasty habit of exploding. A famous example was of a circuit breaker blowing up at the Two Dot, Montana substation of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific.
Love how these guys were trying to find an alternative to steam locomotives in the late 1800s meanwhile the London underground was still using steam trains in the 1940s
Steam was a better technology than people today realize. Steam engines never polluted: The heating source to produce the steam did.
@@MrCarGuy yeah they are great, no dissing them, they were amazing inventions, I'm mainly just surprised that they kept them in an enclosed space for so long.
A correction: The “Tube” or Underground had been converted to electric by the 1920’s. The smoke in the tunnels would have killed the riders....
@@christianfreedom-seeker934 damn, I thought it was way later. I swear I had seen some footage during the 1930s or 40s of a steam train emerging from the darkness of the tunnel. Maybe I misremembered it.
These buildings are super cool. Would be neat to make them into small machine shops and manufacturing shops
The substations are still used as emergency exits
No, because the sub stations are mostly still used as sub stations.
8:24 ahh yes the 1903 shelby Mustang
I was entertained. I can't wait to see the solution for our nations powergrid... Ya know, lets all plug our cars in.
Great video!
Sorry to be "that guy," but a few pronunciations notes:
Facade (Fuh-SAWD)
Anonymity (An-uh-NIH-mity)
I actually think about that last statement all the time. How unbelievably unsafe the past was compared to today. No seatbelts in cars, putting your life at risk to test certain systems, everyday appliances that lack modern safety mechanisms that were used in people's homes daily, the overwhelming pollution, toys kids played with back then that would absolutely not be allowed to be manufactured today (like sharp metal toys) but this could be said about every generation by the next generation which means... I guarantee we are doing something today that would be considered extremely dangerous and irresponsible to people of the future, but today... we simply don't know any better...
Talk about the modern substations (vent buildings) on the Second Avenue Line.