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Mystery coil things at Boylston T stop

Dylan Rossiter asks:

Anyone know what these coil things are at Boylston Inbound?

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You hang your hammocks there. Get a cooling breeze when the train goes by. Just like people in certain Chinese and Indian cities do in the medians of freeways.

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The correct non-fun answer is that they are for holding cables

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I can't recall if the ones at Harvard actually have any cables in them.

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They do; they carry fiber optic cable.

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Or are those cables being placed awfully close to the overhead wire? Can only imagine the potential damage should a pantograph go awry (which is a more common occurrence than one may think). Plus the whole design looks kind of half-a$$ed to me.

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and if the pantograph hits a glass wire....

Nothing happens! Its glass. (or insulated glass)

Once again roadman takes a dump on the T. "design" its not for design its for function. I've actually installed these before and the picture is not complete. There's a top part to that.

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a possible design flaw that could potentially result in damage under certain circumstances. Hardly 'dumping" on the T, as you put it. The last time I was in Boylston Station was on March 13th, so I haven't seen the installation in person (and have no desire to, given that I'm high risk for complications from Covid).

However, as someone else pointed out, I am likely perceiving the photo wrong.

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Those same brackets are placed along the walls of the red line, at least between Alewife and at least Harvard (assuming Alewife because I've at least seen them at Davis and Harvard; it's been a while since I've been on the train). I don't think there's a ton of clearance between them and the side of the trains cars. For the Green Line, these look like they're well off to the side of the car and any potential conflict with the catenary arms. I don't think fiber cable is terribly expensive, for what it's worth.

Ideally these sorts of cables are in conduits or otherwise concealed elsewhere, but the only downfall about these seem to be, to me, that they're not the most sightly thing, as you allude to.

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for the clarification.

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The hooks get you by the back of the shirt to keep you at the proper distance and then fling you inside the subway car when the doors open.

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