RHIANNON: Welcome to Grand Central Terminal. I’m Rhiannon Ross, your official Grand Central tour guide and deep Grand Central aficionado, and I’ll be showing you some of the highlights –and maybe a few secrets– of this iconic place. You’ll also hear from some long-term Grand Central insiders. MICHAEL: …You see the whole drama of life, every day, walking right in front of you… GEORGE: …my home was always here in Grand Central… JANET: …We have tourists, we have customers that's been coming for 30 years… DANNY: …it was done with such pride and care, it was built to be timeless…. RHIANNON: We begin our adventure here, in the “main concourse,” the beaux-arts beating-heart of the city of the world. Hundreds of thousands of commuters and visitors walk through this building every day – on the busiest days of the year, over a million people file through. DANNY: …you just see people, it's almost like watching a school of fish in the ocean and they're criss-crossing each other, not stopping, and it's, they never hit each other, no bumping occurs. RHIANNON: Along the south side of the concourse are a line of ticket windows with ornate polished brass grills, where riders can purchase tickets directly from ticket agents. Tickets can also be purchased by phone, or from the automated ticket machines. Speaking of technology, on the East side balcony, you’ll find the Apple store, one of the busiest locations in the world. The staircase leading up to it was built in the 1990s as part of a major renovation – look closely at the staircase on the other side of the terminal, built 85 years earlier, and you’ll see some differences between the two – the original stairs have an ornate oak leaf design, a different style of handrail, and bottom stairs which extend beyond the stair wall, flowing into the main 1 concourse floor. There are so many things to see and do here in the terminal – it’s so much more than a place to catch a train! But, it’s also a place to catch a train. Around us, and below us, there are 44 train platforms, the most of any station in the world. MICHAEL: It's 47 square acres of territory. It goes 10 stories below ground. Grand Central Terminal is like an iceberg. Much of it is out of sight. My name is Michael Vittielo. I am the vice president of an organization called the New York Railroad Enthusiasts, located at Grand Central Terminal. Railroads, it’s really a vital part of our economy. They're really the lifeblood of how people get to work, how wealth and business is accomplished. At the time when Grand Central Terminal was opened in 1913, the cutting edge technology for its day was very manual. At that time, everything was run by message, by hand-operated switch, and today everything is run by computer.