This morning I took a tour of the MTA’s newly completed East Side Access tunnel 140 feet below Midtown Manhattan. My laptop is about to run out of batteries and, of course, I left my power cord at home. (It’s a good thing I’m only in charge of running a blog and not, say, a 22-foot diameter, 850-ton tunnel boring machine.) So I’m just going to publish these photos with minimal text. I’ll fill in the details later. Warning: If you’re not a serious infrastructure geek, you might just want to skip this post altogether.

Joe Trainor, MTA Capital Construction

Sixteen flights down.

Reminds me of a Merle Travis song.

The "man car." Not the fanciest press junket.

Heading southbound towards Grand Central.

Left curve end. Right curve start. 

Digger.

Blow torch.

Manhattan schist.

Sandhogs.

Drill tip.

 Drill tip and worker.

Back to 63rd Street and 2nd Avenue in all of its sweltering, stylish, SUV-choked glory.