Dan Brucker was escorting us to the first major stop on the Grand Central tour. He had explained to us how the system was enormously larger than the street level footprint of Grand Central Terminal. Still I was surprised that the first stop on the tour took us outside the main terminal. But it made sense.

We walked over to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, through extremely well maintained, highly polished side doors and down the steps. At the bottom was this train. It looked like nothing special. Just a train. Then Dan told us the details. The reinforced trucks, the steel gun turrets that pop out of the top, the X498 marking. All signs that it was a government train.

Of course, it was FDR’s train. It transported his car. The car drove off the train onto a concrete platform, and up to street level.

This shot was the one I didn’t want to take of this area. After researching the site on Google, I found quite a few of this train shot from almost the exact angle.  In the end, I’m glad I shot it the way I did.

There is much more to the story of this “station” than FDR’s train. You can read about it here.
Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page. You’ll find a picture of the doors we went through at the bottom of the page.