Possibly moving to the district

Well, I wanted to share this news with all of you. As you know, I have ridden the Metro in DC before, but as a tourist. That tourist status might change within the next month as I may become a permanent resident of DC with a job promotion.

Now, this means most likely the red line will be my daily commute up to Friendship Heights.

Anyways since you all know I am a railfan, and have heard and contributed some segments, what do you think I should ride first just for the fun of it?

(Sections I have ridden: Grosvenor to Ft. Totten, Ft. Totten to L'Enfant-green/yellow lines, Metro Center to L'Enfant)

Time to ride down into Virginia for you...

True, and I was thinking either towards Huntington or Franconia-Springfield first via the Fenwick bridge. I am hoping that with my plane tickets that the company is getting me that I fly into Reagan National so I can finally ride over the Potomac.

And yes, if I do get my promotion and move there, I do plan to finally ride the entire system.

Now the fun part- finding places to live. So far, Bethesda, Cleveland Park and Adams Morgan are coming up on my short list because it will mean an easy commute without necessarily transferring lines.

Welcome.
If you're becoming a local; 2 things I used to tell visiting co workers:

a) The Mall is NOT a place to go shopping.
b) The name of the airport is "National"...

I can nix flying into National because work decided to have me fly into BWI instead. I may instead end up taking MARC for the first time.

tommyboy6181 wrote:I can nix flying into National because work decided to have me fly into BWI instead. I may instead end up taking MARC for the first time.

Where in NY are you coming from, anyways? I guess it wasn't feasible to take the train the whole way..

tommyboy6181 wrote:I can nix flying into National because work decided to have me fly into BWI instead. I may instead end up taking MARC for the first time.

B30 bus to Greenbelt....

every 40 minutes...

Forget that. MARC is cheap and easy. If on the weekend, Amtrak is slightly less cheap, but just as easy (and faster).

Reminds me of the trip I usually do. I commute from upstate NY to DC most weeks.

Monday: Amtrak from ALB-NYP, work in our NYC office and then NYP-WAS and then Red line to Metro Center to West Falls Church.
Friday: WFC - Metro Center - Union Station. MARC to BWI and Southwest home.

MARC is cheap, Amtrak a bit faster. For WAS-BWI I usually do MARC unless I'm running real late and then Amtrak will save me about 10 minutes which can be handy.

tommyboy6181 wrote:Well, I wanted to share this news with all of you. As you know, I have ridden the Metro in DC before, but as a tourist. That tourist status might change within the next month as I may become a permanent resident of DC with a job promotion.

As someone who worked very hard to earn "resident" status and shake off the bonds of glaring residents angry at my lacking knowledge of local customs such as standing on the right on metro escalator, etc., I should point out that most DC residents are elitists about this. There seems to be a hierarchy: "Pure" residents (lived in the area for 5+ years), Residents (lived in the area for 1-5 years), new residents (living in the district, but not for a year yet), and the lowest rung is tourists.

tommyboy6181 wrote:Now, this means most likely the red line will be my daily commute up to Friendship Heights.

Anyways since you all know I am a railfan, and have heard and contributed some segments, what do you think I should ride first just for the fun of it?

(Sections I have ridden: Grosvenor to Ft. Totten, Ft. Totten to L'Enfant-green/yellow lines, Metro Center to L'Enfant)

First of all, I'm a American University student, but I end up at the Friendship Heights stop every monday morning because I have a meeting up there. It's a fun station, if only for the novelty that half of it is in Maryland.

I'd recommend what I call the "DC Circle Tour" - take the Red Line in to Union Station, have lunch at the food court and visit a few stores (I recommend Fantom Comics, they're one of very few comic book stores in the area), and marvel at the architecture. Then you take the Brunswick line outbound to Rockville, and finally take the red line back in to Friendship Heights. The trip can also be done in the morning in reverse.

I'm not a big railfan, but I'm gonna speculate that Rockville would be a great place for railfanning since there's some decent freight and passenger traffic and meets with Metrorail. It's a nice alliterative thing (Metro meets MARC).

Unfortunately I did not end up with the job. It was a very close decision that took much longer than originally expected. However, I still did get a DC railfan trip for 1 day which isn't bad at all.

Batman2 wrote:I'm not a big railfan, but I'm gonna speculate that Rockville would be a great place for railfanning since there's some decent freight and passenger traffic and meets with Metrorail. It's a nice alliterative thing (Metro meets MARC).

It would be a great area. I can almost see the Randolph road crossing from my place - so I get to hear the horns and trains all of the time, and it is a very busy line. A few of the residents here gripe - I love it though, the sounds remind me of being back in Ohio (close to some other tracks... although not as close as here).

A couple other good locations to observe trains in the DC area include:

1) From the Spring Street overpass above the Metro Red Line and CSX/MARC Brunswick Line tracks in downtown Silver Spring. The Metro Red Line goes underground a short distance north of this overpass, and the overpass is within visual distance of the Silver Spring Metro Red Line and MARC stations a short distance to the south.

2) From the platform of the New York Avenue/Florida Avenue/Galludet University Metro Red Line station - in addition to seeing the Metro trains coming in, you can also see all the Amtrak NEC trains coming into or leaving Union Station.

Another location related to the latter location that probably would also be excellent would be the H Street NE overpass immediately north of the Union Station parking garage.

tommyboy6181 wrote:Unfortunately I did not end up with the job. It was a very close decision that took much longer than originally expected. However, I still did get a DC railfan trip for 1 day which isn't bad at all.

I'm sorry to hear you didn't get the position. On the other hand, living in DC isn't what it's cracked up to be IMO. (My opinion may be related to my dissatisfaction working for the federal government.)

If you do get down to DC at some point in the future for a day trip or weekend trip, my suggestions for locations to ride on the WMATA rail system include across the Potomac River on the Yellow Line, out to Alexandria Union Station on the Yellow or Blue Lines (that station is a nice little station, not big at all but kinda neat IMO; it also sits next to the impressive-looking Washington Masonic National Memorial), and beyond RFK Stadium on either the Blue or Orange Lines (or if using Amtrak or the MARC Penn Line get off at New Carrollton and ride into DC on the Orange Line). With the last suggestion, when you ride back towards RFK Stadium, sit on the left-side of the train while facing forward, and you'll have a nice view of RFK Stadium as the line sweeps toward the stadium before it goes underground.

I actually did get to ride the yellow line over the Potomac for the first time and did enjoy that. It was one of the things I've wanted to see since starting to ride the system back in 1996. I do second the vote for riding down to Alexandria, just didn't have enough time to ride down to King St on this trip. Basically I cut the ride short by getting off at National Airport because of time and needed to be back to Friendship Heights around 5:30 to catch my cab ride back to BWI which my company paid for. Coming back into L'Enfant Plaza, the left side of the train definitely had the best view as you get to see the Jefferson Memorial before you dive back underground.