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Video reveals NYC subway ride 108 years ago from Union Square to Grand Central

nydailynews.com

11–20 of 48 posts

Re: Video reveals NYC subway ride 108 years ago from Union Square to Grand Central

#11

Is that some sort of lighting rig on a parallel track? Is there any more information about how this film was made? Seems like a pretty big achievement for the time.

It looks like it was shot from another train that was following the pictured one. There may have been additional lighting, but the train could have just been illuminated by the headlights of the train behind it.

There is a third train running parallel to the train that is ahead of the camera train, throughout the entire trip. It almost looks like it has an array of fluorescent tubes or mercury vapor lamps.

Sometimes the train with the lighting rig gets a little bit ahead of its subject, which is why the train being filmed gets dark from time to time, but you can see this rig clearly at the beginning, and towards the end, the camera train pulls close enough that you can see the staff on the lighting rig train walking about its platform.

Re: Video reveals NYC subway ride 108 years ago from Union Square to Grand Central

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like it was shot from another train that was following the pictured one. There may have been additional lighting, but the train could have just been illuminated by the headlights of the train behind it.

There is a third train running parallel to the train that is ahead of the camera train, throughout the entire trip. It almost looks like it has an array of fluorescent tubes or mercury vapor lamps. Sometimes the train with the lighting rig gets a little bit ahead of its subject, which is why the train being filmed gets dark from time to time, but you can see this rig clearly at the beginning, and towards the end, the…

You can clearly see the third train providing lighting at 3:10. Very interesting.

Re: Video reveals NYC subway ride 108 years ago from Union Square to Grand Central

#16
post #15

In this vein, one of the grandest bits of NYC train porn are pictures of Penn Station before they demolished it and built the soggy basement that is called Penn Station today: http://www.nypap.org/sites/default/files/penn_station.jpg

In a similar train of thought, Central Station was about to be demolished, too, and got saved literally the last minute:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Central_Terminal#Proposa...

Re: Video reveals NYC subway ride 108 years ago from Union Square to Grand Central

#17
As a (former) regular rider of the NYC subway, the thing that strikes me the most is just how short the platforms all are!

Anyone who's ever had to turn an MVP into something that can serve millions of requests will appreciate some of the history of the MTA. At almost every station along the old IRT lines, you can pick out the boundaries of the "old" stations and where the platforms were later extended. As the article mentions, this was also the reason for the closing of some of the stations. For example the 91st St. station was closed because 96th St. was extended exclusively to the south, adding a new entrance between 92nd and 93rd St. (not much sense in having two station entrances one block apart).

Another related fun bit of trivia... If you've ever wondered why some NYC subway lines have numbers and some have letters, the numbers are the old IRT lines while the letters are the old BMT/IND lines. Both sets of lines use the same gauge (width of the actual rails), but the BMT/IND lines had wider cars. Since the stations had to be built to the width of the cars and not the gauge of the track, even today you can't run the letters on the numbers or vice versa.

Re: Video reveals NYC subway ride 108 years ago from Union Square to Grand Central

#18

A good view of people on the platform starts at about 4:20.

I'm not sure if its an artifact of the camera, a result of their clothes or something cultural but its fascinating to watch them walk. The men especially all walk differently than people today. Their posture and demeanor is almost alien. Its almost like they're all walking down an invisible incline.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090927061327AA...

Re: Video reveals NYC subway ride 108 years ago from Union Square to Grand Central

#19
post #6

Reminds me of this video: http://www.wimp.com/sanfrancisco/ -- uninterrupted San Francisco footage from 1905. Very surreal, extremely captivating.

Wow this is amazing.. they used to have emergent / "chaotic" traffic patterns back then in the west, the likes of which you only find in (much of) Asia, Africa or India these days.

And how agile, vivid and alert most everyone is in the streets! Quite remarkable -- truly people were a different breed back then, for better or worse.

Re: Video reveals NYC subway ride 108 years ago from Union Square to Grand Central

#20

A good view of people on the platform starts at about 4:20.

I'm not sure if its an artifact of the camera, a result of their clothes or something cultural but its fascinating to watch them walk. The men especially all walk differently than people today. Their posture and demeanor is almost alien. Its almost like they're all walking down an invisible incline.

I could believe that gait/pace/posture vary by culture, region, and era... as with say diction and relative prevalence of different facial expressions. Even if you removed the cues of dress and surroundings, you might be able to watch video of walkers from different cities and tell New Yorkers from others, or at least large cities vs. small towns, etc. And just seeing how much more formally dressed city dwellers once were, in public - different clothes require a different style of motion and imply a different intended presentation to others.

But, I suspect artifacts of the filming and conversion to modern formats are larger factors. Slight differences in replay speed, or cyclical variations caused by either the original machinery or compromises of framerate conversion, could also lead to the kind of 'alien-ness' we perceive.

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