The MTA has been working on the East Side Access project—which will connect Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central—for years, and today the agency announced that sandhogs have completed major blasting under Grand Central Terminal. The MTA says the area under the terminal is "where they are building two enormous caverns 160 feet below street level that will house eight tracks for Long Island Rail Road trains." Check out this blasting video:
More details from the MTA:
Since March 7, 2007, nearly 1,000 employees working 24 hours a day, five days a week, have completed more than 2,400 controlled blasts - all without affecting the nearby operations of MTA Metro-North Railroad or the New York City Subway. Approximately 857,000 cubic yards of rocky muck were excavated and removed, enough to cover the entirety of Central Park one foot deep.
“This is a very significant milestone for the East Side Access project,” said Dr. Michael Horodniceanu, President of MTA Capital Construction. “The caverns are essentially now fully excavated. Much work remains to be done to build the platforms and tracks, and finish what is currently raw, cave-like space. But we now have a fully built shell in which all future work will take place.”
Each blast was overseen by an FDNY-licensed blaster. To conduct a blast, teams of sandhogs drill hundreds of holes measuring 1½ inches in diameter into the mica-inflected granite schist that forms the bedrock of Midtown Manhattan. Together, the holes are loaded with 200 to 500 pounds of an explosive powder known as Emulex. After the sandhogs clear into a safe area, the Blaster-in-Charge issues a warning - “fire in the hole!” - and triggers the blast.
