William D. Middleton (1) (1928–2011)

Metropolitan Railways can’t quite make up its mind and decide if it’s a coffee-table railroad book (it would need to be thicker and have more color pictures to be successful in that career) or a railroad reference book (in which case it would need more charts and tables). Nevertheless, it’s still interesting and useful; it strong point is North American heavy rail history.


First, some definitions (these are current FRA definitions and may not have been used in the same sense historically) :


* Streetcar: usually single-car vehicles running on rails set into city streets.


* Light rail: multiple car rail vehicles running partially on streets and partially on dedicated right-of-way; usually not grade separated.


* Heavy rail: multiple car rail vehicles, usually grade separated (subway or elevated).


* Commuter rail: rail passenger cars on dedicated ROW pulled by conventional freight railroad engines.


Obviously, there’s a lot of overlap; streetcars sometimes pulled trailers or ran on elevated or subway tracks; some light rail systems (notably Pittsburg) are extensively grade-separated; some subway systems have long at-grade sections, etc.


Metropolitan Railways is a little inconsistent in its presentation of these categories. The historical section of the book focuses on heavy rail – the development of urban subway and elevated systems. Unless you wanted a much larger book, streetcars systems could not have been included – there were just too many of them. The modern section, however, includes streetcars – since there aren’t very many left. Commuter rail isn’t discussed at all, either historically or currently.


New York City provided the impetus for heavy rail development; not only was it the largest city in North America, but the long, narrow shape of Manhattan channeled traffic into a few corridors and made for horrendous traffic jams; in 1850 it took 20-30 minutes to travel a block and the street railways (horse-drawn) carried 18 million passengers in 1855. The obvious solution was grade-separated transit; the problem was motive power. Steam power in a subway filled it with smoke; steam on elevated tracks dumped smoke into nearby windows and sparks and ashes on pedestrians below. Various solutions were tried; “smoke-consuming” engines; fireless engines (at each station another charge of steam was pumped in); pneumatic power (bullet-shaped cars blown through tubes by fans; you can see one of these if you visit a Subway® restaurant); compressed air; cable cars; “moving sidewalks”; and gravity (each station had an endless chain, like a rollercoaster; the cars were pulled up an incline and coasted to the next stop). Some made it as far as prototypes and test lines; the only thing that was even marginally successful was cable cars (NYC had an elevated cable railway for a short time); but eventually cities interested in heavy rail bit the bullet and went with stream power, regardless of the drawbacks. The first elevated steam railway opened in NYC in 1871. Electric power solved the steam-in-a-subway problem, and Boston beat out NYC for the first North American subway in 1897 (although this used streetcars rather than heavy rail). The last major advance in electric railway technology also occurred that year, with Frank Sprague developing a multiple unit control system (previous multiple unit electric trains had consisted of a powered “motor” pulling one or more unpowered trailers).


The historic section is well done; my only quibble is that it would have been nice to have some maps showing stages of subway development; the NYC system is especially hard to follow.


Modern metropolitan railway systems are covered up to the date of publication (2003). A lot of interesting discussion involves the politics of rail systems; BART and the Los Angeles Red Line are of special interest. I would have liked to read more about politics on a national level; the fact that Washington DC has such an extensive system makes for interesting speculation. Technological advances in the last 100 years are just refinements of existing systems; lightweight materials for car construction, advanced tunneling techniques, and rubber tires are the major improvements. The book also discusses the unaccountable popularity of monorails; almost every time a city proposes rail construction (including Denver), opponents propose a monorail instead, even though monorails have no cost or performance advantage over dual track systems. I guess they just seem more “modern” somehow. The expense of tunneling or building elevated structures has increased so much that smaller cities can only afford light rail (our estimate was that elevated rail costs about 18 times as much per mile as light rail, and subways cost about 25 times as much; about half the cost of the first line Denver built was reconstruction of bridges and overpasses).


Appendices include a map of every metropolitan rail system in North America (streetcar only systems like Galveston and Kenosha aren’t shown, although systems that mix streetcars with other transit, like New Orleans, San Francisco and Toronto are). Another appendix goes into some detail on rail technology; I would have liked to see more of this. I was fascinated by what it takes to make the trucks for rubber-tired cars, like those used in Montreal; there’s a set of rubber tires, a set of conventional flanged steel wheels (in case a tire fails) and a set of horizontal guide wheels that bear against vertical guide ways outside the rails.


This one will go to my reference shelves at work; it will be useful for getting familiar with other transit systems and for understanding a little about how ours works.… (plus d'informations)