World's first underground railway

O

OzBoz

New member
I don't know where N3V obtained the information, that the PATH railway between New Jersey and New York is the oldest underground railway in the world, (as per ad nauseum in the newsletters) but that is not the case, not by a long way. The Metropolitan line of the London Underground predates the PATH by 44 years, and was carrying 40 million passegers a year before the PATH carried a single passenger.

Cheers
 
The oldest subway (underground) in America is the Boston subway, built in 1897.

http://www.massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=254

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/gallery/first_big_dig/

http://www.mbta.com/about_the_mbta/history/

This system also had some of the longest tunnels in the world at the time as well such as the one between Boston Atlantic Avenue and East Boston Maverick Street. The method used to build this system through the downtown is the same as that used on London's Underground. This is the the cut and cover method which means a trench is dug in the ground and everything is covered up once the tunnel is in place. In 1901 when the Cambridge Subway was built to link Boston to Cambridge (today's Red Line), they had to use deep tunnels because of all the buildings on Beacon Hill. When the subway exited from the Boston side of the Charles River to cross over the Longfellow Bridge, they put the tunnel entrances through basements of some of the buildings. (This is an interesting modeling idea... hmmm....).

John
 
London Underground - 1863
MBTA (Boston) - 1897
PATH (NYC-NJ) - 1907
Back when I was sailing, I would often stay in Manhatten, taking the PATH train daily from the WTC to Exchange Place, right across the Hudson in New Jersey, to the Marine Engineers hall, located close to the old Erie Lackawanna yards. The Exchange Place station was deep, several hundred feet underground. The escalaotor and stairs was a workout to reach the surface. These poor old feet usually used the elevator.
The WTC station in those days (prior to 9/11) was a busy place with shopping an retauraunts, etc. I rather enjoyed walking around the place taking in the sights and the (somewhat overpainted) lassies.
 
Let's not forget the Glasgow underground. Often overlooked, even by those living on the same island. It opened in 1896, making it the third oldest underground in the world. With it's narrow island platforms, it's quite hairy when busy.
 
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Was that London date right in the 1860's or is it mixed up with a railway line underground as Glasgow has such around the same time. Anyway the Glasgow Subway does tend to get ignored having been started in 1896 and originally cable-driven it was taken over by the City Council and electrified. Being probably the thirsd oldest it does brisk business but is slightly narrower than the standard railway gauge which always cancelled out any hope decades ago of linking to the railway network or it's nearby tunnels.

Early in the 20th century the staff in a referendum votes to call it the "Underground" but that never caught on and Glaswegians continued stubbornly to call i "Subway".Today when travelling on the Glasgow Suburban eletric system and you approach Partick interchange Rail Station that connects down below to the Subway the train announcement now rightly (!) calls it the Subway.

Another oddity was that originally the two-coach subway cars had to be ulifted from the tunnels by a winching system to the streetlevel yards but nowadays the trains drive up an inclined tunnel to the depot. I have lost count of the times the powers that be have yakked about extensions that never happen. The Transport Exec is now in process of modernisation of it.
 
We must not forget that Liverpool has a very old underground too,

According to wikipedia, so I do need clarification on the following, the Crown Street tunnel in Liverpool was built in 1829, followed by the Lime Street Tunnel in Liverpool in 1886.

The Mersey Rail Tunnel was opened in 1886, the tunnel runs under The River Mersey and under The City of Liverpool UK.

Hope the above helps, but I did hear a long time ago in a history of Liverpool tour, that Liverpools underground was one of the oldest in the world.

Please, if someone could verify the dates above, that would be much appreciated.

Joe Airtime
 
Hi Everybody.
pfx said:
Let's not forget the Glasgow underground. Often overlooked, even by those living on the same island. It opened in 1896, making it the third oldest underground in the world. With it's narrow island platforms, it's quite hairy when busy.
Click to expand...

I know exactly what you mean there pfx. Although the London Underground has very wide platforms the volume of use especially in the rush hours can make it "very hairy" at times. There are several stations in central London where the escalators come down directly into the back of the platform. Everybody stands near the front of the platform to make sure they actually get on the train when it comes in as there is always a mad rush to the nearest door.

However, the problem comes when you have to wait near the front of the platform for the few minutes. You can then find the pressure building up in your back as the escalator continuously deposits people onto the back of the platform which are then pushed forward by even more people being deposited behind them and they are pushed forward into the backs of the people on the front of the platform. you can find yourself inches from the edge staring down at the high voltage line and praying for the train to arrive. Inevitably it is then that the train status board suddenly changes to read " next train 3 minutes" when it had been reading 1 minute only seconds before,AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH.

I will swear that half the suicides associated with the London Underground are not suicides at all but just the unlucky ones who find themselves in the above situation. :confused:

Bill (still in the office at 9:30 PM just finishing and grateful to the trainz forum for some light relief)
 
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airtime said:
We must not forget that Liverpool has a very old underground too
Click to expand...

The Liverpool tunnels aren't strictly an underground railway, just long tunnels. The first being the 1.26 mile Wapping tunnel, bored in 1829. I think this may be where the OP is picking up the error by N3V though I could be wrong. There's a definite difference between and underground railway and a railway tunnel.
 
pfx said:
The Liverpool tunnels aren't strictly an underground railway, just long tunnels. The first being the 1.26 mile Wapping tunnel, bored in 1829. I think this may be where the OP is picking up the error by N3V though I could be wrong. There's a definite difference between and underground railway and a railway tunnel.
Click to expand...

Many thanks pfx for clearing that up.

Joe Airtime
 
stovepipe said:
Budapest has an early subway too, May 1896, which makes it second oldest I think.
Click to expand...

Quite right. Glasgow underground was December 1896 and LU January 1863.

The disagreements often occur when people argue that various railway tunnels around the world predate any of these. These three are quite distinct in being purpose built rapid transit systems.
 
wholbr said:
Hi Everybody.


I know exactly what you mean there pfx. Although the London Underground has very wide platforms the volume of use especially in the rush hours can make it "very hairy" at times. There are several stations in central London where the escalators come down directly into the back of the platform. Everybody stands near the front of the platform to make sure they actually get on the train when it comes in as there is always a mad rush to the nearest door.

However, the problem comes when you have to wait near the front of the platform for the few minutes. You can then find the pressure building up in your back as the escalator continuously deposits people onto the back of the platform which are then pushed forward by even more people being deposited behind them and they are pushed forward into the backs of the people on the front of the platform. you can find yourself inches from the edge staring down at the high voltage line and praying for the train to arrive. Inevitably it is then that the train status board suddenly changes to read " next train 3 minutes" when it had been reading 1 minute only seconds before,AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH.

I will swear that half the suicides associated with the London Underground are not suicides at all but just the unlucky ones who find themselves in the above situation. :confused:

Bill (still in the office at 9:30 PM just finishing and grateful to the trainz forum for some light relief)
Click to expand...

You shouldn't be working so hard, Bill!

Boston's Park Street Under (Cambridge Subway aka the Red Line) has very narrow center platforms that can get really crowded too. They too do the same with stairs emptying right on the platform instead of tunnels winding down to them. This gave me nightmares as a kid, knowing that there was a third rail with 600V DC connected to it!

I agree with you on the suicides. Good point.

John
 
An interesting item there OzBiz but not a new idea. E.R. L. Fitzpayne the Glasgow bus, tram, trolleybus and subway boss, actually mooted the same subway idea away back in the mid-1950's. In fact he mooted a glass wall along the platform and the car doors would align to opening doors in it. Not sure why a NYC project in 1901 is thrown in as early when we are talking about systems set up back in the midst of Victorian times? Glasgow is still up thereI reckon in the top 3 or so?
 
rjhowie said:
An interesting item there OzBiz but not a new idea. E.R. L. Fitzpayne the Glasgow bus, tram, trolleybus and subway boss, actually mooted the same subway idea away back in the mid-1950's. In fact he mooted a glass wall along the platform and the car doors would align to opening doors in it. Not sure why a NYC project in 1901 is thrown in as early when we are talking about systems set up back in the midst of Victorian times? Glasgow is still up thereI reckon in the top 3 or so?
Click to expand...

Well 1901 is considered "early" over here. :) Technically speaking, it's still within the late Victorian early Edwardian period. The technology built during this period was still deeply rooted in the Victorian period because designs and ideas moved a lot slowly back then compared to today. Also by 1901, tunnel development was still in its infancy and was still using the same techniques as those from the 1850s and 1860s.

Sometimes ideas are passed over at one point as being crazy or even old-fashioned, then come full circle again as a brand new idea. We see this more today because of the way technology moves so quickly. Things are rehashed all the time in the computer and high-tech industry. The latest and greatest thing today is SAAS, Cloud, Ajax, etc. This is nothing new and really dates back to the time of mainframes. Back then people had no applications or data on their local computers. They used terminals instead with everything kept up in the computer room on big mainframes. There was that time in the early 1990s when people were tossing mainframes in lieu of work groups of PCs and small file servers. They were saying that big datacenters were obsolete, mainframes were for the old-fashioned companies who didn't keep up with the times, yada, yada, yada, Then a bit more recently, some group of "experts" came up great novelle idea of running programs as a service off of a mainframe, while storing data up on a server somewhere. Say what?? Isn't this essentially the same thing that was done previously? Heck, we've just gone full circle in 30 years! The next great idea will be computer user "communities" or something like that when some experts come up with the idea. That there are security issues with cloud and SAAS, etc. is a bad idea because it's not as efficient as sharing data in a community. Remember we can't call it a workgroup or file share anymore because that's old. ;)


John
 
Interesting snippet there pfx just a pity the Glasgow idea so long before it wasn't utilised. Nice to know that Glasgow is still among the pioneers of subways. Just the value of being th ecentere of the Universe.....!
 
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