The New York Subway, Its Construction and Equipment — John Shaqi
The New York Subway, Its Construction and EquipmentInterborough Rapid Transit Company
History
The New York Subway, Its Construction and Equipment
Interborough Rapid Transit Company
Local transit -- New York (State) -- New York; Subways -- New York (State) -- New York
Water for condensing purposes is drawn from the river and discharged
into it through two monolithic concrete tunnels parallel to the axis
of the building. The intake conduit has an oval interior, 10 x 8-1/2
feet in size, and a rectangular exterior cross-section; the outflow
tunnel has a horseshoe-shape cross-section and is built on top of the
intake tunnel. These tunnels were built throughout in open trench,
which, at the shore end, was excavated in solid rock. At the river end
the excavation was, at some places, almost entirely through the fill
and mud and was made in a cofferdam composed chiefly of sheet piles.
As it was impossible to drive these piles across the old timber crib
which formed the old dock front, the latter was cut through by a
pneumatic caisson of wooden-stave construction, which formed part of
one side of the cofferdam. At the river end of the cofferdam the rock
was so deep that the concrete could not be carried down to its
surface, and the tunnel section was built on a foundation of piles
driven to the rock and cut off by a steam saw 19-1/2 feet below mean
hightide. This section of the tunnel was built in a 65 x 48-foot
floating caisson 24 feet deep. The concrete was rammed in it around
the moulds and the sides were braced as it sunk. After the tunnel
sections were completed, the caisson was sunk, by water ballast, to a
bearing on the pile foundation.
Adjacent to the condensing water conduits is the 10 x 15-foot
rectangular concrete tunnel, through which the underground coal
conveyor is installed between the shore end of the pier and the power
house.
[Sidenote: _Steel Work_]
The steel structure of the power house is independent of the walls,
the latter being self-supporting and used as bearing walls only for a
few of the beams in the first floor. Although structurally a single
building, in arrangement it is essentially two, lying side by side and
separated by a brick division wall.
There are 58 transverse and 9 longitudinal rows of main columns, the
longitudinal spacing being 18 feet and 36 feet for different rows,
with special bracing in the boiler house to accommodate the
arrangement of boilers. The columns are mainly of box section, made up
of rolled or built channels and cover plates. They are supported by
cast-iron bases, resting on the granite capstones of the concrete
foundation piers.
Both the boiler house and the engine house have five tiers of floor
framing below the flat portion of the roof, the three upper tiers of
the engine house forming galleries on each side of the operating room,
which is clear for the full height of the building.
The boiler house floors are, in general, framed with transverse plate
girders and longitudinal rolled beams, arranged to suit the particular
requirements of the imposed loads of the boilers, economizers, coal,
etc., while the engine-room floors and pipe and switchboard galleries
are in general framed with longitudinal plate girders and transverse
beams.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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