2016
Digging on the East Side Access project started two years ago and will take another six before its complete. When it’s open the Port Washington and Main lines will terminate at Grand Central, instead of Penn Station.
Updated 01:17, January the 29th, 2010
Manhattan has a world beneath it
Fifteen stories beneath 42nd Street construction crews are tunneling bedrock, building four new tunnels that will carry the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal.
“It’s a different world,” said Cuthbert Cyrus, who’s been doing the job for five years. “We say we’re working on our tunnel tan when we’re down here. Sometimes when I get to work at 6 a.m. and leave at 4, you don’t see the sun all day.”
Graffiti on the walls reads “No Rats” – a reminder to miners not to leave their lunch lying around.
“We see a lot of rats down here,” said Cyrus, a member of tunnel digging Sandhog’s union.
When finished the new LIRR terminal at Grand Central will be 110 feet beneath the main dining concourse.
Crews break up rock with a tunnel-boring machine; when they get deep enough, they use dynamite.
They’re cutting through Manhattan schist, a type of rock that forms the backbone of Manhattan island and helps support many of the city’s towering skyscrapers.
A world beneath Manhattan's streets
- Digging the East Side Access tunnel, a good week Sandhogs chew through 450 feet of rock
- Plenty of time for a 'tunnel tan' with work going until 2016