Talk:Early history of the IRT subway

Trains: Rapid transit / in New York City Mid‑importance

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A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on October 27, 2009, October 27, 2010, October 27, 2019, and October 27, 2023.

This is from the 1916 BDE Almanac:

All West Farms express trains run to and from Bkln. and all express trains of B'way line run to and from Bkln. in rush hours. Local trains run in Mhtn. from South Ferry and City Hall [?] Express stations are all those in Bkln. and in Mhtn. at Bowling Green, Wall, Fulton, Bkln. Bridge, 14th, Grand Central, 72d and 96th. All stops are made by express trains north of 96th. Running time from Bkln. terminal to [?] 27 min.; to B'way terminal, 53 min.; and West Farms terminal, 50 min. Running time for? express trains from South Ferry, 10 min. less [?] each terminal.

--NE2 17:42, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Other sources indicate that Lenox locals served Brooklyn late nights, Lenox expresses (West Farms?) served Brooklyn at other times, and rush hour Broadway expresses served Brooklyn. --NE2 17:52, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Map[edit]

It would really improve this article if someone made a map showing the original subway lines and/or services. Perhaps there could be a lighter version of the current system with the original having darker lines so that it is easy to see how the original version ties in with the current version? There should really be some visual representation of the route. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 04:25, 28 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a free image [1] (taken from this page), but it will show you the routing of the original subway. It went from City Hall Loop to Grand Central via the current IRT Lexington Avenue Line; Grand Central to Times Square via the current IRT 42nd Street Shuttle; and Times Square to 145th Street via the current IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line. Due to changes in the track configuration on the 42nd Street Shuttle portion, it is no longer possible to ride a train directly via the original routing. Acps110 ^{(talk • contribs)} 05:02, 28 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Merge with IRT[edit]

This article doesn't have that much information and that article has a good amount of info so they should be merged. Can this article be merged within a week? Kew Gardens 613 (talk) 19:27, 21 March 2014 (UTC)Kew Gardens 613[reply]

Let's have a move discussion about this first, and see what others think. Epicgenius (talk) 14:32, 30 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Design[edit]

@Epicgenius: Design should probably be split off to its own article, Design of the IRT or something-it isn't exactly fitting to be in an article on the early history of the IRT. Great additions to this article as of late. Kew Gardens 613 (talk) 17:24, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Kew Gardens 613, thanks, I appreciate it. I was thinking the same thing (splitting the "Design" and "Equipment and mechanical features" sections into an article about Infrastructure of the early IRT subway), but for a different reason. This page is getting long - it already has 66,000 bytes of prose, above the point where Wikipedia:Article size#Size guideline says an article "probably should be divided". I'm surprised by the sheer amount of information I'm still finding about the early IRT.

I haven't split the article yet because I was thinking we should instead write an article about the design and infrastructure of the subway in general. There is a lot to say about Dual Contracts and IND designs, especially with regards to platform layouts, mezzanines, tunnels, and elevated structures. – Epicgenius (talk) 18:04, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally, the "Merge with IRT" thread above is quite ironic. Nine years ago we were talking about merging this article with the IRT page because there was so little information. Now there's so much info that we're talking about splitting the page... Epicgenius (talk) 18:09, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yup. We have made major progress on this article-size was also a reason it had occurred to me. Information on the IRT is easier to come by in some ways than the IND-I have snippets of some magazine/industry articles on IND design I need to put somewhere. Kew Gardens 613 (talk) 19:25, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]