🚀 go-pugleaf

> > Speaking of worlds limited to the NYC-DC axis, is it false that the DC
> > subway system includes the world's longest escalator.  There are several
> > longer ones elsewhere, mostly in the subways of the former Soviet Union.
> > (Details tend to be fragmentary, with different sources giving different
> > ones as the longest.)
> 
> Lessee. We used to ahve the world's longest subway escalator, which was in
> the Rosslyn, Virginia, station. Then it developed that the Soviet Union, not
> to be outdone, went and built a slightly longer one.
> 
> To the best of my knowledge, the Wheaton, Maryland station now does have the
> world's longest escalator. It's a bit more than twice as long as the Rosslyn
> escalator.

Well, the best source I have is the 6th edition of "The Guinness Book of
Railway Facts and Feats", edited by Richard Balkwill and John Marshall,
published by Guinness in 1993, ISBN 0-85112-707-X.  It says that the
longest station escalator is in St. Petersburg "with a vertical rise of
59.5 m (195 ft)" and the Moscow has one "with a rise of 50 m (164 ft)".
This information is exactly the same as was in the 4th edition of the book,
which was called "Rail: the Records" and published in 1985, except of course
that St. Petersburg was then called Leningrad.  As I recall, the last time
this thread came up, someone cited a slightly longer escalator in another
ex-Soviet city.

Note that these figures are for the *vertical rise*; assuming the usual
30-degree inclination, the actual length would be twice that value.

So what's the rise, or the length, at Wheaton?
-- 
Mark Brader, msb@sq.com             "Information! ... We want information!"
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto                              -- The Prisoner

My text in this article is in the public domain.