Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT), the city’s most celebrated railway landmark, has lifted the curtains of its most closely-guarded secrets — an underground vault where, for nearly a century, cash from ticket counters and stations across the city was stored overnight before being dispatched to banks the next morning. The strongroom was recently restored and lit up as part of the overall conservation of the ground floor of the heritage building. Part of CSMT architect FW Stevens’s floor plans, the chamber, located below the old cash office, once held the daily earnings of the erstwhile Great Indian Peninsula Railway.

According to a railway folklore, a secret passage connects the vault to the Reserve Bank of India, but this is untrue