When the New York City subway system wants new electric motors for the HVAC systems on the Canadian-built cars running on their Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) lines, where do they go? To a Dutch company Vostermans in southern Illinois and IBT in Kansas City, of course.

Maybe a little background would help. When the IRT ordered some 350 newly designed cars from Bombardier of Canada in 2001, each car came with two six-and-a-half ton HVAC units on the roof. The units included fans running a 3 phase 460 volt AC motor that turned a twenty-four inch fan blade at 1000 rpm. The motor was rated at just under two-and-a-half horsepower.

There was solid engineering logic behind those modular roof-mounted units. They were designed to be replaceable in about an hour, thus reducing the need to remove the subway cars from service for repairs.

The elegance of the engineering concept notwithstanding, make no mistake about it. Those units work in a bad neighborhood. Consider their working conditions:

• Frequent starts and stops, putting both torque and shear loads on the components.
• Inside, they are in dirty, dusty tunnels where there's no telling what is in the air – or what may fall on them.
• When the train runs outside on the elevated lines, the problems of rain, snow, ice and more dirt and foreign objects also increase.
• Lengthy routes: the IRT runs from the Bronx to Flatbush; from Times Square way out into the borough of Queens, past Shea Stadium, home of the NY Mets.
• Long hours of service: the NY subways never close.

The total fan units themselves were built to be tough, with fire resistance being a particular design feature. There is little in urban life more potentially frightening or dangerous than a fire in a subway tunnel.

After six years of hard use, the IRT decided to refurbish the HVAC units. And that triggered a need for replacement motors and fan assemblies. The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) turned to original supplier Vostermans Ventilation for options and found Multifan.

The MTA is the New York region's transportation management organization. They are not only in charge of the 660 miles of subway tracks and 6,000 plus subway cars; they also are responsible for buses, commuter railroads and bridges. The whole enterprise adds up to 2.4 billion trips per year and involves more than 47,000 employees and an annual operating budget of $6.5 billion.

Responding to the MTA request, Vostermans – the manufacturer of Multifan, a Dutch company with international headquarters in Venlo, Holland and with a US operation in Bloomington, Illinois, involved IBT – a master distributor.

Together, IBT and Vostermans put together a proposal that involved 235 Multifan motors and 40 complete fan units – and a big price tag.

The partners won the order and are preparing to deliver the units to a contractor who will see them properly installed and put to work in the tunnels and elevated lines of New York City's IRT subway lines.

So the next time you find yourself crowded into a subway car during rush hour on New York's Lexington Avenue subway lines, just remember that you can be grateful to Vostermans and IBT for the cooling, comforting air that is flowing through the crowd.

If you have your own subway lines – or just want to cool whatever area you have: factory, warehouse, greenhouse, barn, whatever – and need a high performance fan powered by an electric motor, think Vostermans/Multifan and IBT. They have just the ticket.

For more information, contact IBT General Industrial Supply.