Robert Sullivan, writing for the New York Times:
The other sound he heard was at the Manhattan end of the Lexington Avenue line’s under-river tube — the Joralemon Street tunnel — which he entered via an emergency exit at South Ferry. What he heard there was as familiar to a tunnel inspector as a robin’s call is to a bird-watcher — a hard, rhythmic chug: chhhh…chhhh…chhhh…
It was the sound of old-school subway technology, a pneumatic pump powered by pressurized air from pipes that run all the way back up to 149th Street, where a compressed-air station was unaffected by Con Edison’s power outage downtown. There are dozens of air-compressor pumps all along the Lexington Avenue line; each one of them removes about 200 gallons of water per minute and is about 60 years old, having replaced early-20th-century models. Jezycki refers to these pumps as his Studebakers. They were struggling, but succeeding enough to keep the tunnel clear, draining the water that chased out Joe Leader before flowing downhill toward the East River tube. Aboveground, the plywood had kept the water out of the air vents.
Fascinating piece. I would love a tour of the NYC Subway that includes seeing all this industrial-era tech!