Third Rail: The History Of The New York City Subway

De: Geoff Arrington

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Beneath the streets of New York lies a sprawling, 800-mile machine with a dramatic and often unseen history. It is the story of a city conquering its own geography, a tale of ambition, conflict, and incredible engineering that transformed a congested 19th-century town into a modern metropolis. This book chronicles the complete, century-spanning saga of the subway, from the first horse-drawn omnibus to the complex digital network of today.

Explore the fierce three-way race between the competing private and public subway empires—the IRT, BMT, and IND—as they battled to control the city's underground. Go into the tunnels with the sandhogs who risked their lives to build the system and uncover the hidden design logic that shaped everything from the ornate station tilework to the font on the signs. This is the definitive story of how the largest transit system on Earth was built.

Follow the subway's long descent into a state of near-total collapse, a gritty era of crime and graffiti that made it a global symbol of urban decay. Relive the massive, multi-billion-dollar effort to pull the system back from the brink, a turnaround that included a relentless and successful war on vandalism. The narrative also reveals the system's secrets, from forgotten ghost stations to the private presidential track hidden deep beneath the Waldorf Astoria.

Step into the tunnels during the system's greatest modern crises: the destruction of 9/11, the sudden paralysis of the 2003 blackout, and the devastating deluge of Hurricane Sandy. This book provides a detailed account of the technological, political, and cultural forces that have shaped the subway throughout its entire existence. It is the biography of the machine that is the key to understanding the city it serves.