Notes from Underground
Ben Soo and I went on the Un Métro la nuit tour late late Friday night along with 3 dozen others. I’ve posted a quick photographic travelogue here with explanations.
It was great fun to see the stuff you never see and the aperçu really did give me a better appreciation of the constant effort that keeps the metro system running day to day.
To answer a question asked here on the blog: why can’t the system run 24/7 like the New York or London subway systems? The answer is that in most of our system we run both tracks through the same tunnel. In those older systems, with separate tunnels, at night you can run alternating trains in one tunnel while you clean and repair the other. Here, we’ve got to close the system for a couple of hours every day to do the maintenance work.
ant6n 20:01 on 2011/10/29 Permalink
So they can’t run trains on one track while cleaning the other? Aren’t they doing most of the maintenance/cleaning using vehicles?
Kate 20:43 on 2011/10/29 Permalink
As I understood it, they turn off the current while doing the cleaning, and the cleaning vehicles run on diesel. The vehicle that towed the observation flatbed thing we were on last night was diesel powered, it wasn’t a metro car in any form. I don’t think you would want these two kinds of vehicles in the same tunnel at the same time.
Ian 21:36 on 2011/10/29 Permalink
Nice use of the singular graffito :)
Steph 22:05 on 2011/10/29 Permalink
Photo album from a local redditor thatstheguy
http://imgur.com/a/62vgT/all#0
& some less serious photos from the night http://imgur.com/a/Nrekw
Robert J 09:09 on 2011/10/30 Permalink
great travelogue! thanks for clearing up the night maintenance thing.
Simon 20:30 on 2011/11/01 Permalink
They could have expanded the garages at the ends of the tracks, get more cars on rotation, employs less useless drivers and changers and more mechanics… They don’t do it because they never thought of it when building it in the first place… lack of vision. Like the opus like the weird fares, etc.. VERY COOL pictures though!
Doobious 15:18 on 2011/11/10 Permalink
Just a little video from the STM’s PR department.