They would cut their train shed of fifty tracks about in half--and then place one of these halves directly above the other. This would make a fairly logical division between the through and the suburban traffic of the terminal. In that way the new Grand Central was planned. And that one thing represented its first important demarkation from the other great passenger stations of the land. It also is the thing that pointed the way to the most wonderful development of America's most wonderful terminal, the thing that is infinitely greater than the station itself. Recall once again, if you will, that dirty smoke-filled yard at the portals of the old station. It was rather an impressive place; by night, with its flashing signals of red and green and yellow, its glare of dominant headlights and the constant unspoken orders of swinging lamps; by day, a seeming chaos of locomotives and of cars, turning this way or that, slipping into the dark cool train shed under grinding brakes, or else starting from that giant cavern with gathering speed, to roll halfway across the continent before the final halt. To the layman it was fascinating, because he knew that the chaos was really ordered, on a scientific and tremendous scale, that the alert little man who stood at the levers of the inconspicuous tower mid-yard, was the clear-minded human who was directing the working of a great terminal by the working of his brain. But to the thinking railroader that railroad yard, like every railroad yard in the heart of the great city, was a waste that was hardly less than criminal. The coming of the electric locomotive has spelled the way by which that waste in the hearts of our American cities may be ended. Concretely, in the case of the new Grand Central, it made a splendid solution of one of the greatest of the growth problems in the largest city of our continent. For, while the new Grand Central, service and approach yards considered even as a single level--some sixty acres all told--are larger than the older yard, they apparently have disappeared. In that thing alone a great obstacle to the constant uptown growth of New York has been removed. Sixteen precious city blocks have been given back to the city for its development. And already a group of buildings possessing rare architectural unity and beauty have begun to rise upon this tract.