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Grand Central Terminal "M42"

10017 New York, NY, United States of America (USA) (New York)
Address 89 East 42nd Street at Park Avenue,
 
 
Floor area unfortunately not known yet  
 
Museum typ
Electric motors/generators/pumps

Opening times
 Grand Central Station is open Daily 5:05 am through 2:00 am
For Grand Central's touers see untappedcities.com
Please note that due to enhanced security measures, Grand Central no longer allows access to behind-the-scenes places like the M-42 basement, FDR train car or glass walkways to non Metro-North or MTA employees.

Admission
Status from 11/2018
 Closed
Contact
eMail:tours untappedcities.com.   
Homepage
to Location / Directions
untappedcities.com/2016/04/28/inside-the-clandestine-m42-basement-deep-under-grand-central-terminal
Our page for Grand Central Terminal "M42" in New York, United States of America (USA), is not yet administrated by a Radiomuseum.org member. Please write to us about your experience with this museum, for corrections of our data or sending photos by using the Contact Form to the Museum Finder.
Location / Directions
N40.752800° W73.976522°N40°45.16800' W73°58.59132'N40°45'10.0800" W73°58'35.4792"
The exact location of M42 is a closely guarded secret and does not appear on maps.
Description

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Grand Central Terminal's 49-acre (20 ha) basements are among the largest in the city. This includes M42, a "secret" sub-basement under the terminal that contains the AC-to-DC converters used to supply DC traction current to the tracks.
The exact location of M42 is a closely guarded secret and does not appear on maps, though it has been shown on the History Channel program Cities of the Underworld and a National Geographic special.

Two of the original rotary converters were not removed in the late 20th century when solid-state ones took over their job, and they remain as a historical record.

During World War II, this facility was closely guarded because its sabotage would have impaired troop movement on the Eastern Seaboard It is said that any unauthorized person entering the facility during the war risked being shot on sight; the rotary converters could have easily been crippled by a bucket of sand. Abwehr (a German espionage service) sent two spies to sabotage it; they were arrested by the FBI before they could strike.

untappedcities.com:
Deep below Grand Central Terminal, there’s a hidden power station known as M42 that does not appear on a single map or blueprint. In fact, its very existence was only acknowledged in the late 1980s and its exact location is still not public information. Nonetheless, unpublicized special tours have allowed the curious to head down there in the last five years or so. We can’t share all the details of how we landed on the coveted visit, but we were given the opportunity to explore this and other off-limits places in Grand Central Terminal recently – and took photographs.

Most famously, the M42 basement (also known as Substation 1T and 1L) played an important, clandestine role in World War II. The original converters, which are no longer in operation, powered much of the New York Central Railroad and were a target for German spies who wanted to sabotage rail movement on the East Coast. The M42 basement was so secret that you risked being shot on site if you went down there – something our intrepid guide, Daniel Brucker, the official historian for Grand Central Terminal confirmed.

For more infos and a video see untappedcities.com, linked under "Homepage" here in Museumsfinder..
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