Thursday 10 March 2011

Raising the tone

A few more vintage shots have appeared of the New York El, many of them featuring the delightfully-named "Suicide Curve" at 110th Street (all are best viewed clicked to enlarge).


Originally this was a simple "S" curve, but a station was added here a few years after the line opened.


While that shot showed the sharpness of the curves, this next one shows the height of the tracks above ground level:


Here's another shot, which I included mainly to show the delightful colour light signals:


And this one is a neat shot of electric cars, either joining or separating:


But, saving the best til last, here's the line not long after opening, before the station, when haulage was by tiny steam locomotives rather than electric power:


You can see just how suburban, almost rural, this part of the city was at that time. Utterly delightful.

2 comments:

Niall said...

What date were these taken?
I love the miniature steam locos. They are cute.
The thin, pier-like structure barely look sturdy enough to support a railway!
The sheer height of it all is almost unnerving.

LeDuc said...

Most of them were taken in the late 1930s.

The last shot was taken in the late nineteenth century but I don't have an exact date. Anyone?