Bronx high school students studying electrical and building trades got a rare look behind the scenes at Grand Central Terminal on Tuesday.
Twenty-one students from the Bronx Design and Construction Academy, a vocational school in the South Bronx, rode the Metro-North Railroad to Grand Central to meet with some of the tradespeople that work on the 111-year-old building.
The visiting students are studying for certifications in heating, ventilation and air conditioning — HVAC — or in one of the electrical trades, said Orvil Boatswain, an HVAC instructor at the school. They were hoping to see how their trades are plied at Grand Central.
“We’re going down to the Track 100 shops,” Brian Phillips, the railroad’s deputy director for track repair, told the students as they stood under the painted constellations of the terminal’s main concourse.
The rooms along Track 100, Phillips explained, housed many of the workshops that keep Grand Central humming: locksmiths, machinists, metal shops, HVAC — “basically all your trades you need to keep this beautiful place functioning.”
After a brief safety briefing, the students split into smaller groups.
HVAC hopefuls headed to the sheet-metal shop where duct-work is made, while the electrically-minded headed down beneath the terminal to the service plant, where water and high pressure steam are sent around the building.
“The electrical field — if you love this craft, it will take care of you,” said Severin Smith, Grand Central’s superintendent of electrical and mechanical maintenance, speaking over the din of water pumps and other machinery. “Don’t worry about the money, learn the craft.”
“What would you like to do?” Smith asked the students
“Signals,” said one student.
“You’ll work with Metro North!” Smith replied. “We need guys like you. Please, work with us.”
“Elevator repair,” said 17-year-old Daniel Santiago.
“You’re going to make a ton of money,” Smith told Santiago with a smile. “But it’s hard work. It’s not easy.”
Santiago said the challenge of working on a powerful machine tasked with moving people safely appealed to him. “And you wont run out of places where you have an elevator or an escalator,” he said.
As the students climbed out of the pump room and back up towards the tracks, Boatswain, the instructor, recognized an old student, currently employed in Grand Central’s machine shop. The two men embraced.
Back under the fiber-optic stars dotting the ceiling of the station’s main concourse, MTA chairman Janno Lieber spoke with the students.
Calling the century-old terminal “the capital of mass transit in the United States,” he asked them to consider “serving [their] neighbors” by coming to work for the MTA.
“We all know New York kids are curious about the system,” Lieber said. “The natural reservoir of talent for us is kids who grew up in New York and know our system. It means something to them.”
