🚀 go-pugleaf

msb@sq.com (Mark Brader) wrote:
>> > 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.
>


Rosslyn was about 210 feet long.  Dupont Circle is about 204 or 206.  
Wheaton is probably about 215 or 220.  The one is St. Petersburg is the 
longest but I don't know how long.  The Wheaton one is the longest in the 
Western World if that phrase still applies.  Forest Glen, south of 
Wheaton is actually a deeper station but the travel time on an escalator 
would have been prohibitive so they put in 6 elevators.  The escalator in 
Wheaton takes one minute twenty seconds to ascend/descend.  The elevators 
at Forest Glen take about twenty seconds.  Metro designs their system 
based a lot on travel times.  The Forest Glen Station is about twenty two 
stories deep in the ground (about 220 down vertically).  I got this info 
from the head architect or planner at Metro.  Give him a call sometime.  
He's very informative.

A lot of this was on this news group about two or three months ago.

Mark