Secret area under Penn Central Station

Yes, very interesting! Thanks for sharing.

It was New York Central.  The map shows Maine to Chicago as Metro North  Metro North is a lot smaller than that and not all of it is electrified

Thanks for posting.

Quite impressive!

The room still seems shrouded in mystery, but its importance is definitely getting escalated by those who don't quite grasp details. At a minimum, it held the converters that took AC power and brought it down to the DC used by the third rails on the tracks. The terminal itself may have been powered thru the room, but to claim 80% of troop movements in WWII went thru Grand Central, or even the NYC, is a bit much...

I thought the same thing when I saw the map Don. I was hoping one of

you local's would chime in and set the facts straight... How far out did the

electrics go ?

 

 

Surely, they could have used conventionally powered locomotives if the electric service was compromised, right?

 

Cool!

 

Thanks for posting!

 

 

This is the Metro North Railroad today  It is the remnant of the New York Central, New HAven, and Erie Lackawanna commuter ops.

Everything West of the Hudson is diesels without any electrics,  The Hudson Line is electrified from Grand Central to Croton-HArmon.  The New HAven line is completely electrified.  There is about 50 miles of electrification on the HArlem line. 

There is a law in New York City prohibiting steam engines from running in the tunnels but nothing against diesels although its pretty bad idea.  The FL9's ran on diesel into Grand Central more often than not.

During a disaster, there are a few things that tend to ring true:

• Standard rules don't apply -- almost anything goes to get the job done
• No one prosecutes a hero. Think about the kid who stole a bus an evacuated a bunch of people during hurricane Katrina.
• History is the ultimate judge.

They would have run steam in the tunnels, rules or no rules if they had to. I doubt anyone would have even waited for management, let alone government approval to do so.

I agree with Matt, I doubt that prohibition would have been an issue.

 

This room housed the coverters to change to high voltage AC to DC for the NYC and NH trains. How did that get to the room and was it also as tightly guarded?

It would be interesting if Metro North went as far as the midwest of course.

Scotie

Most interesting video. Makes this famous terminal even more special.

Regarding the running of steam or diesels in the NYC tunnels:

 

How about ventilation?

Are those tunnels vented well enough to allow those sort of engines to run without making people sick?

Thanks for posting. I really enjoy seeing that old equipment like that. Over the years I have seen many equipment rooms, not on that large of a scale or that far below ground but similar, housing boilers for heating and electrical equipment. I always find that sort of thing fascinating and more interesting than any modern stuff we have today. Then you think about how they had to do things back then and the tools they had to work with and it becomes even more fascinating. They needed man power back then, lots of people working on projects like that. Much of the work was done by nothing but hard labor, and it was probably done better than we do it today. The size, weight and quality of the equipment, control panels and gauges, etc. it was heavy duty and built to last. That old stuff is just amazing to me. Some of the old stuff like that is 80-90-100 or more years old and still working. Sad part is most of the ones I have seen were being torn out and replaced by modern equipment.

 

Where the heck is Penn Central Station?!

 

Jon

Logic would dictate in the middle of Pennsylvania so

everyone could get to it....

Nope. The ordinance barring internal combustion locomotives was spawned by a rear-end collision that was blamed on smoke obscuring signals in the Park Avenue tunnel.

 

The converter room is under Grand Central Terminal. Still houses the original equipment, but solid-state converters handle the work now. Still regarded as a "sensitive" area--I wouldn't expect any Transit Museum tours to go down there anytime soon  

 

---PCJ

I assume the equipment is no longer in use - correct?

 

Richard

There is not any ordinance barring internal combustion engines.  The only ordinance bars steam engines.

interesting story indeed, ty for sharing

 

In the early 2000's Metro North had a railfan event that included a presentation at Grand Central, which was followed by fascinating escorted tours of the deep basement rooms with the electrical equipment. Following that, we boarded a train that stopped at a sub station in Westchester. Then we went up to Croton Harmon, turned around and headed back to Grand Central. It was a terrific autumn day and every participant received a nice 1/4" thick slice of rail in a jewelry box as a souvenir. Many Metro North personnel volunteered their day off (Saturday) to make this event possible.