^^^ roffle
1.
After six years of traveling the subways from Queens to Brooklyn and Manhattan, I recall that the third rail was mostly covered over to prevent casual mechanical contact. There was an open slot for the sliders on the cars to pick up the energy to run them. The "ground" was the other running rails. (These had jumpers between the sections of steel rails to allow for better conduction.)
So that's why I posed the question --to ask why flooding didn't disrupt service altogether. Seems strange to me, as well as others. The total current delivery capacity must be enormous. And if I may say so, the notion that it's the current-delivering capacity of an electrical system which is dangerous is false without considering the voltages and resistances involved.
The current-delivering capacity of the ordinary car battery is pretty large (+300Amps) but you can lay hands across the battery terminals without ill effect since it's only 12 volts. Just don't drop a wrench with ~zero ohms resistance across the terminals...
that's where the current delivering capacity is dangerous.
2. With an unknown number of cars running over each set of rails, it would be impossible to figure total current draw without the number of cars and current draw for each car. I do know, from inspectin from the subway platforms, that tht third rail was a pretty substantial hunka conductor. I imagine the data is available somewhere on the net, but that doesn't matter in respect to the question as to how come the whole system isn't shorted out.
Maybe it was all distilled water, which is basically nonconductive
3.
Most people don't realize that there is an umbilical cord between NYC and Albany. NYC politics practically runs the State, but many people with vested interests in that umbiical cord remaining uncut would vehemently deny this. (At least that was the situation when I moved out to Colorado mid-last-century.)
4.
I still follow NY affairs, but with about the same level of interest that I follow Papal matters and British Royalty matters --that is, for the amusement factor alone.
Terry, 230RN
