My electrical-engineer dad would have enjoyed the tour I took today as part of the annual Open House New York weekend. It was of IRT Substation #13, designed to generate power for the New York City subway and one of the oldest.
It opened in 1904, the same year as the first subway. The mayor, governor and, apocryphally, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, among other dignitaries, arrived at the substation-warming party in horse-drawn buggies.
Old #13 has operated continuously since and today powers the 1 line, which old-timers still call the IRT. Although it houses sinister-looking modern equipment, the substation serves as a de facto museum because it contains original machinery, the centerpiece of which is the Westinghouse 1,500 kilowatt rotary converter. Incredibly, this 50-ton wheel didn’t go offline until 1999.
Our guide, a chief overseer of the city’s transit substations with the foresworn duty “to preserve our electrical history,” as he said, was an amiable bearded fellow by the name of Bob. It was big of Bob, a 37-year MTA veteran, to even give the tour because about the same time it started, a building in Corona, Queens collapsed, narrowly taking a chunk of the 7 line with it, so he likely had other matters on his mind.
Bob used a lot of electrical-engineer talk, but as a seasoned guide he let the kids on the tour flip old switches and offered everyone entertaining bits of trivia. One of these, confirmed by MythBusters, is that it’s safe to pee on the electrified third rail of the subway track, but only if you’re more than six feet away, as one of the show’s hosts learned the hard way.
We were also told those blue lights in subway tunnels mark the location of an emergency power switch. Anyone can pull it to deactivate the third rail, a potentially lifesaving maneuver if someone falls or leaps to the tracks. Bob said these oft-fatal actions happen much more often than you’d think: two or three times a day. You only read about them in the Post when they involve a pretty white person or are particularly gristly.
The substation is located on West 53rd Street, directly behind the Ed Sullivan Theater, where the entire back wall and stage floor are grounded to shield Dave and his guests from electrocution.
Here’s a back corner of the substation where the walls bristle with old-fashioned signals, switches and signage.
Nearby, Bob demonstrated where workers could light cigarettes on exposed bits of metal coursing with 600 volts. After checking with someone over his walkie-talkie, he popped an active circuit breaker (13F11, if you’re keeping track at home), an action that arrives with a heartstopping BANG.