More Research Odds and ends.

Here’s some more link and related stuff. In this post I’m going to do things like link to books in my library as well. Do I think that everybody will be able to access naval academy textbooks from the 1930’s? Not really, but I never expected to find them either, but when I did I bought them. and the set of The History of Technology and that book on farm life in the Nineteenth Century.  The reason I have those references is that that I was open to buying them in the first place. As a writer the goal to be to write a book that Sarah Hoyt will not throw across the room. Your goal should be to not insult the reader’s intelligence, not go so far off the deep end that reader never wants to come back.  You should do enough world building that the reader will feel comfortable living in that  world.

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Why Can’t New Yorkers Have A Nice City?

When I was very little, you never saw graffiti. Up to the time I was about eleven or so, it wasn’t a big deal.  But around 1972 or so you couldn’t avoid it.  From the time that I started going to baseball games on a regular basis until the 1980’s and the MTA painting all the trains in a paint that allowed paint to be washed off and finally replacing the entire fleet of subway cars with stainless steel cars, you couldn’t ride a train that wasn’t covered in the stuff.

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Building The Second Ave Subway

The Second Ave is the largest and longest awaited expansion of the NY Subway in the last 50 years.  In fact a proposed expansion of the Subway onto 2nd Ave has been a part of NY Subway planning  for over a Century.  At last  phase 1 is almost completed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway

A wonderful gallery of pictures in the tunnels.

http://jalopnik.com/these-photos-of-nycs-subway-project-are-astonishing-513446087

More from business insider.

http://www.businessinsider.com/new-photos-mta-progress-of-2nd-second-ave-subway-nyc-mta-2013-12

Some pics on flikr.

Looking Uptown

Some Albums from the MTA.

SAS_9719
Second Avenue Subway Update: 72nd Street Station
Second Avenue Subway Update: First Work Train Ride
Second Avenue Subway Update: February 27, 2015

 

Second Avenue Subway Update: January and February 2015

 

More here.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/albums

A drone takes a trip.

And more video from WCBS.

And the NY Times.

A video from the MTA.

The Second Ave sagas blog.

http://www.secondavesagas.com/

MTA’s info page.

http://web.mta.info/capital/sas_alt.html

In spite of all the complaints it’s important to remember that these are huge projects under very trying conditions and severe constraints.  And they seem to be doing well.