New York's steampunk pneumatic subway

New York's Beach Pneumatic Subway of the late 1800 was one of New York's first attempts at rapid transit, and it was a strange, wonderful, impractical and politicallly fraught endeavor. Joseph Brennan, an amateur historian of the Beach Pneumatic, has written an excellent, engaging, and frighteningly comprehensive history of the Pneumatic, with lavish illustrations, aimed at separating the mythology from the truth.

Link

(Thanks, Robyn!)