The shadow of war hung over the southern horizon. But inside Grey Crag, the sound was not the beat of war drums.
It was the ringing clatter of air-powered rivet guns and the heavy chug of steam-powered derrick engines.
Giles Croft stood on the raised gallery of the station concourse, his brass line-weight-bob dangling sixty feet above the polished granite platform floor. The braided silk cord hung dead still against the engraved index mark on the low roof wall.
Beneath him stretched the massive hall of Grand Central End-post.
Twelve huge pin-connected Waddell steel roof beams spanned two hundred feet from outer granite pier to outer granite pier. The sweeping curved arches vaulted seventy feet into the air, painted a heavy-duty zinc gray and framing thousands of diamond-shaped panes of wire-heavy glass.
Beneath the soaring glass-and-steel canopy lay six working railway tracks, flanking four broad passenger platforms paved with sharpened mountain granite.
Not a single inside column interrupted the vast expanse.
Beside Giles, Toby Karr held a large roll of blueprint thick parchment, his eyes tracing the crisscrossing steel diagonals of the upper wind bracing.
