Secret Subways and Clandestine Underground Transit

Originally posted by FIFIGI
Riga, Latvia apparently have one secret metro line for the local elite. There was an article years ago about it - I need to dig it up.

Yes you do. It would be spectacular if its a normal newspaper article.

Originally posted by ioweagle


Hi, great post. This may or may not be of interest to you urban explorers

I read the majority of the thesis earlier this year and your post reminded me of it.

Amongst other things they have explored some of londons "closed" stations.

Is there any indication that some of these closed stations may not be closed?

Originally posted by METACOMET

And that's it. That's my story and I swear it's true. I'm still not sure what to make of it. It's certainly one of the stranger experiences I've ever had. To this day I don't know what the tunnel's purpose was. We didn't ask and they didn't tell.

If you're going to share such an intriguing story you might at least tell us where that was, within, say a 10 mile radius?

People come here to post about sounds they heard, strange digs happening, miners-stories...but what about the locations? If we had locations we could actually drive around and check whether we notice anything peculiar.

Originally posted by Agroiam
Hi everyone, an interesting read. I gotta say that there is definitely more below ground than we are led to believe. My father worked as an electrical engineer for Daniel,Mann,Johnson, and Mendenhal for over 10 years back in the late 70's thru 80's. He had a TS clearance and for about 6 months he was deployed to Tonepah NV where he and the other engineers would get on a bus daily and drive and hour into the desert where he would 'go underground'. He had told me that he was involved in the UG MX missile system which was being built to combat the 'eyes' of the Soviet Satellites. Essentially he told me that there were "miles and miles" of tunnels in which flat bed train cars would have the MX missiles lowered onto them and transported to points that he thought were as many as 20 to 50 miles away. The idea was that the Soviets would zoom over, see it, and then we would lower it down, move it, and raise it up elsewhere. He had told me that there were different levels that some of his buddys worked on that he never got to see. Although I have no 'hard' proof of these things of which I write, I highly doubt that my father lied to me about it. If anything I think that he didn't give me the whole story.

That would today be this company in case anyone wants to do some research.

Nice thread Sky. I love reading stuff like this.

Here in Melbourne Australia the US built a number of interconnected tunnel in and around the city during WW2.

There use was mainly to connect to hospitals and no doubt move arms around. Tours are offered for a small part of these I believe.

One tid bit of info I have overheard is that generally there are really 2 sets of plans to this city. One that is fronted by the public facing town planning dept should anyone want to tunnel or do serious escavation works to ensure you are not going to collapse known underground infrastructure. The a second department which ensures no unknown underground infrastructure will be hit.

There are many govt buildings here the have extensive basement systems which few know about. But you know NDA's don't always keep the guys that have to move all that dirt too quiet.

Just hear say, no proof to back this up

Somewhat of interest are of course the Richard Sauder books who has collected documentation of subterranean tunnels, facilities and sites for decades.

This is an interesting idea, but there are a few things you should consider.

Firstly, Geology. Take a look at London, UK. There are very few subway tunnels in the area south of the river, generally the south of London is covered more by aboveground rail, with stations along the riverline especially acting as hubs connecting the two, like Charing Cross, etc. The reason for this is that the ground south of the river is unsuitable for subway building. I doubt that's because it was too challenging for subway builders - the Northern Line under the city is ridiculously deep in places, takes forever to get down to the platforms.

No matter how sophisticated your technology, therefore, you are limited by the basic geology of your terrain.

Secondly, also geological, you have other issues such as fault lines. Especially active areas would be incredibly challenging to build a resilient system in.

If this is something you wish to research, my suggestion would be to make friends with a civil engineer and a geologist, and then ask a series of questions.

If you're looking to discover something, the best way is to start from a position of attempting to design such a system yourself. Say you had the resources and the power necessary to build a secret tunnel or subway system. First question to ask yourself - why would you build it? What advantages would you accrue by being in possession of a secret subway system? Would you be a government or private entity or mixture of both? Would you logically be able to justify building such a system based on any given mindset?

Secondly, consider where you would build it, and again, why. What are you transporting, and why does it need to be private or hidden? Is the terrain amenable to such creations?

Thirdly, consider how it would be built. Consider the resources necessary, maintenance, secret contracted workers (or alternately, a routine assassination plan), Consider the planning and engineering skills needed to create and maintain a system like this, and again, do you have access to them as whatever entity you are?

Once you've figured that stuff out, you're on your way to figuring out if those things exist, because ideally, by asking yourself these questions, you'll come up with avenues where to look.

For example, if I wanted to do this, I'd import the workers, ideally illegally. If I had total control over workers, including them not knowing where they really were or being able to tell anyone locally about it, that would go a long way to secrecy without too many risks. E.g. I import a few hundred workers from rural china or india. I pay them what to me would be peanuts, but to them would be decent money for a few months work and then keeping my mouth shut when I go home. Even if someone did talk, they'd be in a place where nobody would care or listen, and far far far from where the tunnels were, with no actual knowledge of where they'd been. That seems the most practical solution (vs. murdering workers afterwards) but there may be others.

Hope this helps, good luck in your quest.

reply to post by Inannamute


You, and a few other posters have raised a few important points about practical feasibility. Building massive subways would be an incredibly expensive and difficult undertaking, so I wouldnt expect many such projects to be underway..

Originally posted by Skyfloating
reply to post by Inannamute

 

You, and a few other posters have raised a few important points about practical feasibility. Building massive subways would be an incredibly expensive and difficult undertaking, so I wouldnt expect many such projects to be underway..

On top of that, I'm not sure there is a single privately held subway car manufacturer left in the world... meaning all these guys have reasonably open books - and of course there would be workers being paid to make the cars (and keep quiet - these would be luxury cars, yes?)...

Well...

the weight of evidence is pretty much against the whole thing...

Why would they need it when they have private jets?

Also your pic appears to be this tunnel...


Great video and urban explorers are always coming across secret tunnels and subways.

The well hidden don't need these forms of transportation when they can simply teleport..

But if finding the pieces to this derails from the truth.. well by all means.. please proceed.

Originally posted by longlostbrother


the weight of evidence is pretty much against the whole thing...

Not really. For national security reasons alone there must be several tunnels (if not subways) from place to place.

Although I believe this theory as a whole, has merit, I can say with certainty that the examples related to Toronto do not hold any relevance.

1) As other posters have stated, the secret Bay station is simply a product of bad urban planning and was never used as the system expanded. In addition to the public viewings they hold for the station, they also commonly rent the station out for TV/Commercial production crews who want a subway set without having to close a "live" station.

2) the T-branch tunnel mentioned between Greenwood & Donlands is nothing more then an access tunnel to the large TTC rail yard that lay just south of the line and sits above ground, easily visible on Google Earth (if you care to look)

reply to post by Skyfloating


I read an article about this station in AMNewYork over a year ago. It used to be in use, but a few dozen years ago, they starter using longer trains, so this station, which has a very sharp curve was abandoned and a new one was built next to it.

Sometimes the explanation is simple

Gidon

Good thread, I can personally attest to the private subway underneath Washington D.C. Years ago a college buddy of mine was working for a Senator and my wife and I went to visit him. He took us from the Hart Senate building to the Capitol via this subway. However, it is more like a tram than a subway. The cars we sat in were not enclosed, they had no roof. I gotta say it was a pretty cool experience. He definitely had to show ID to get us onto the system.

I have heard about the tunnel under the Waldorf Astoria that was reportedly used by Roosvelt so that the public never had to see him in his wheelchair. I propose that none of the stations you show are very secret as you have photos of them. The real secret ones are not know about and there are no photos. Thats how secret works to me anyway.

Growing up in NYC I had occassion to explore the subway systems and in many if you walk away from the public boarding areas you will find doors and stairways that go to abandoned old lines or unsued old stations. A friend and me spent a whole day down under the subway once. In NY the subways are multileveled with subways under and over subways in many levels underground. You can hear trains going over your head and under you. Some parts of the subway system are still flooded today from the storm a few weeks ago. We are talking deep deep holes.

The first photo cant be but so far underground as it certainly looks like the skylight is lit from the sun.

reply to post by Skyfloating


They layed the first transatlantic cable in the 1850s with the first transmissions going over in 1858. The Cable runs from a point in Ireland to New Foundland in Canada. Unfortunatly this cable failed in just three months. The failure of the cable undermined the peoples confidence in transatlantic communications. It took five more attempts before a successful cable was laid. By the end of the 19th century Great Britan, France Germany and America had cables crisscrossing the atlantic.
We know they have crossed the atlantic with cable. A tunnel would be a much harder feat to achieve because of the Atlantic trench. They would have to bridge this rather than cross over on the bottom. I am not an engineer so I dont know how difficult this would be. I can only imagine the problems they could face.

Originally posted by ANOK
Don't know about the rest but West Ashfield station in London is not secret, or clandestine.

It is a fully functional fake station used to train new employees.

Neither is the first one in NY, that's one of the original stations taken out of commission because modern trains no longer fit through the tunnels.

This is not a secret station, it's an outdated station no longer in use. There are countless videos of urban explorers checking it out after breaking in. There's nothing "secret" about it, it's just boarded up.

There are underground stations all over the world that are disused, we have countless stations in London that were abandoned, closed up but still there. Some are used for storage, some are redesigned to be other things, or maintained to be bomb shelters etc when a wealthy corporation is above it.

Having said that, most developed nations have genuine secret tunnels and stations. We've known this for decades. It's logical that they would exist.