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| Public Service knew that although a Broad Street station was a natural terminus for its new City Subway line -- it would easily tie in with the lower level of the PS building, giving access to several streetcar lines and the amenities of the terminal itself -- in a few years the new Penn Station would be opening, and there was no question that the City Subway would add that straight shot of track to the terminal, hooking up commuters with not only Pennsylvania RR trains but the Hudson Tube line, rerouted there from its Park Place terminal. In 1937, two years after the Subway had opened, the link was completed to Penn Station. |
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A newspaper report of the work in progress. |
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Here at Penn Station one of the few wrecks on the line happened. In 1944, as a motorman was pulling into the station with this 23 Central car, an electrical short produced some acrid smoke, blinding him. The car took the curve too fast, jumped the tracks and tore along the tunnel wall for 100 feet in a shower of sparks before coming to rest crosswise across the tracks and plunging part of the terminal into darkness. Several people were injured and the car had to be junked. |
Here's how most of us remember the start of the subway line at Penn Station. You entered via a long stairway. Say, is that woman wearing Go-Go boots?! Just past this station, a spur track led to the Lower Level of the old Public Service Building. (These inbound and outbound spurs were used to store work cars until 2002, when they were extended as part of a new spur service to the Broad Street station of the old Erie-Lackawanna. Scheduled opening: 2006.) |
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