Over the last few weeks ElevateIT! has built the Eighth Avenue el one layout at a time: 116th Street, the high viaduct over St Nicholas Avenue, 125th, 130th, 135th and 140th Streets, the hump at 145th Street, the express flyover at 152nd Street and the terminal at 155th Street. Here they all are joined up, two and a quarter miles of it, so you can ride the whole line from the front of a train.
Press Play, or the space bar, and the train runs at 20 mph, stopping at the stations on its track. Drag to look round, and the up and down arrow keys or the mouse wheel move you along 10 ft at a time. The panel lets you choose the express or either local track, north or south, the speed, how long it waits at each station, and whether you ride in a gate car’s cab, a later MUDC car’s or with no car at all. It is a big file and it builds the whole line when it opens, so it is happiest on a computer rather than a phone.
Every part as the app builds it
Nothing in the ride is modelled for the picture. Every tie, rail, guard timber, walkway board and girder is the one ElevateIT! would export to print, and all eleven layouts are placed on the map where the line ran. The line is on the prototype’s grade too: the rail is 50 ft above the street at 116th Street and comes down to 20 ft by 138th Street, with every bent as tall as the line is at that point.
The hump and the flyover
Ride the express to see the two places where it leaves the locals behind. At 145th Street it climbs nearly 12 ft to run between upper and lower platforms, and drops back down again before 149th Street. At 152nd Street it climbs about 17 ft over the local track on the flyover before coming down into 155th Street.
The cars, and the street
The gate car’s cab is laid out as the Street Railway Journal described it in 1902, at the front right-hand corner looking out over the open platform; the MUDC cab is the enclosed cab of the cars that ran from 1923. The controller and brake valve are stand-ins, because I have not yet found what they looked like. The trains on the other tracks are IRT subway cars, the Hi-V and the 1904 composites, for variety rather than being strictly prototypical. The Eighth Avenue el ran its own shorter cars, and the clearances to the structure are not checked – so mind your head!!.
Along the avenue there are 444 buildings. Those still standing are at their measured roof heights from New York City’s building footprints, the paler blocks stand in for buildings since replaced, and on the east side from 142nd to 148th Street they are the 1940 buildings themselves, from the 1930 atlas and the facade kits. North of 155th Street, on the west side, are the Polo Grounds’ stands, with a representative height.
If you ride it and something looks wrong, a station in the wrong place or a building too tall, I would like to hear about it through the contact form.
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