This secret train track was once used to transport VIPs into the Waldorf Astoria hotel

Most people lucky enough to stay at <a href="http://inhabitat.com/nyc/">New York City</a>'s famed <a href="http://inhabitat.com/nyc/250000-bees-find-a-home-atop-the-waldorf-astoria-hotel-in-manhattan/waldorf-astoria-bees-1/" target="_blank">Waldorf Astoria</a> get in through the lobby doors, but did you know that there's another, much more covert, way to gain access to the posh hotel? An ordinary door on 49th Street acts as a portal to the clandestine train platform, which was most famously used by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Known as Track 61, the structure was built below the hotel as a way to usher FDR and other important folks into New York City unnoticed. Inhabitat recently embarked on a private tour into the depths beneath the hotel to check out the mysterious track and accompanying train car for ourselves.

With hard hats in tow, guests are lead into an unmarked street level door near the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, down beneath the street into the inner-workings of the city.

A modest stairway leads visitors into the belly of the beast and into the abandoned station, where it is difficult to hear over the hiss of steam being discharged by infrastructural pipes and the hum of trains passing by on adjacent tracks.

A modest stairway leads visitors into the belly of the beast and into the <a href="http://inhabitat.com/nyc/index.php?s=lowline" target="_blank">abandoned station</a>.

Amidst the infrastructure pipes that serve New York City still sits the train that carried FDR into the Waldorf Astoria, helping to disguise the president’s disability from polio to the public.

The car is no longer fancy (rumored to have been plush with velvet and electricity), but now stands abandoned and decaying.

What is visible is the that the train is heavily armored to protect the precious cargo inside.

Next to the train is the original private platform, as well as the elevator that would transport FDR- and his car- into the basement of the Waldorf Astoria, or into the Grand Ballroom.

Although the station looks long abandoned, it is still a magical gem beneath the city. Sadly, the tours are not open to the public nor are listed on the MTA website.