Silver Line Dulles WMATA Metrorail progress/pictures

YOLO wrote:5612? did you mean 5012 or is it some other reference?

I passed thru the silver line stations way later in the day, so chances are it did not happen right away. the glitchy PIDs were on the Tysons corner outside unit. I definitely did see one of the Greensboro PIDS completely off.

Now onto phase 2! Cant wait until we can go to Ashburn...

No, I meant 5612. It was the leading unit for what appeared to be the very first in-service westbound trip to Wiehle Avenue.

Now that the Silver Line is finally here, what will Metro riders call the Orange Crush? Will it now be the Silver Slugfest? The Silver Juicer? I will be very interested to know how much worse the backups are between Court House and Metro Center.

Decided to wait and let the opening day crowds die down and waited to ride until today. Relativly smooth ride! Leaving Reston East, the only problems I encountered were one farecard machine not working and one faregate not working. Healthy dose of people in line too. I did go ahead and pay $10 for one of the commemorative SV farecards. Once on board, had a 1 seat ride all the way into L'Enfant Plaza to go to some of the Smithsonian museums. Decided to ride to DCA to check out the new Ben's Chili Bowl location. Really good, would recommend. Rode back to Rosslyn and transferred to the Silver Line. One thing I did notice is that on the lower level platform is that the flashing blue/orange sign still shows "Vienna" even if a Silver line train is arriving, anyone know if WMATA is planning to change that? Also, when we were departing, our train lost speed commands just south of the station and our lead car lost power (I believe where there is a gap in the third rail) and switched to its UPS batteries while our driver contacted central. Other than that, a smooth ride back out to Reston. Great day, looking forward to more rides in the future. Pictures and videos to come tomorrow.

Here is the sign at Rosslyn in question:

mackievlzpro wrote:Decided to wait and let the opening day crowds die down and waited to ride until today. Relativly smooth ride! Leaving Reston East, the only problems I encountered were one farecard machine not working and one faregate not working. Healthy dose of people in line too. I did go ahead and pay $10 for one of the commemorative SV farecards. Once on board, had a 1 seat ride all the way into L'Enfant Plaza to go to some of the Smithsonian museums. Decided to ride to DCA to check out the new Ben's Chili Bowl location. Really good, would recommend. Rode back to Rosslyn and transferred to the Silver Line. One thing I did notice is that on the lower level platform is that the flashing blue/orange sign still shows "Vienna" even if a Silver line train is arriving, anyone know if WMATA is planning to change that? Also, when we were departing, our train lost speed commands just south of the station and our lead car lost power (I believe where there is a gap in the third rail) and switched to its UPS batteries while our driver contacted central. Other than that, a smooth ride back out to Reston. Great day, looking forward to more rides in the future. Pictures and videos to come tomorrow.

Here is the sign at Rosslyn in question:

Those flashing signs need to be updated in several places, and not just to better reflect what train is coming but to make them visible. LED signs would be much better to see from a distance.

TheOneKEA wrote:

YOLO wrote:5612? did you mean 5012 or is it some other reference?

I passed thru the silver line stations way later in the day, so chances are it did not happen right away. the glitchy PIDs were on the Tysons corner outside unit. I definitely did see one of the Greensboro PIDS completely off.

Now onto phase 2! Cant wait until we can go to Ashburn...

No, I meant 5612. It was the leading unit for what appeared to be the very first in-service westbound trip to Wiehle Avenue.

Yep - my son and I boarded that car at Largo around 11:30 or so. Was signed as a Orange Line train to East Falls Church until just before we pulled into EFC. Only a handful of people in the car at the time, but then full on pandemonium as we pulled into the station and filled up with excited riders.

I'm pretty sure John and I crossed paths a few times, I overheard someone talking about having traveled over from the Eastern Shore while I was wandering around Tysons. Was that you that got asked to step back from the tracks while taking an outbound picture from the inbound track at Wiehle-Reston, then ended up having a conversation about what secured the "No Passengers" gate at the end of the platform?

Excruciatingly long trip report.
My photos from the day.

"JDC"
. . . One thing I did notice is that on the lower level platform is that the flashing blue/orange sign still shows "Vienna" even if a Silver line train is arriving, anyone know if WMATA is planning to change that? . . .

Don't know. Seems to me WMATA should remove them as the PIDS make them redundant.

"HokieNav"
Yep - my son and I boarded that car at Largo around 11:30 or so. Was signed as a Orange Line train to East Falls Church until just before we pulled into EFC. Only a handful of people in the car at the time, but then full on pandemonium as we pulled into the station and filled up with excited riders.

I'm pretty sure John and I crossed paths a few times, I overheard someone talking about having traveled over from the Eastern Shore while I was wandering around Tysons. Was that you that got asked to step back from the tracks while taking an outbound picture from the inbound track at Wiehle-Reston, then ended up having a conversation about what secured the "No Passengers" gate at the end of the platform?

Yes.

Well shoot, I should have said hello. It would have been good to thank you in person for all the info I've learned over the years from reading your posts.

I was the guy in the red polo shirt standing there taking pictures of my son.

Now I know to say "Hi" at the Phase II opening in a few years.

The twitter world is giving us stats on the morning rush. All tweets from Martin Di Caro (WAMU):

Clarifying some earlier tweets with more exact numbers: This morning: 6,729 fewer entries at Vienna, Dunn Loring and WFC on OL.

I should note that a number buses that used to drop off at WFC are now dropping off at Wiehle or Spring Hill.

Still ample parking at McLean Station #SV.

One last break down: at the four Tysons stations as of 10 a.m. 1819 boarded, 2106 exited. Reston had more boardings than exits: 4727>1063

As of 10 a.m. 185 entered/332 exited at Greensboro station. Spring Hill 559/432.

As of 10 a.m. 4,727 entered/1,063 exited at Reston. McLean: 568/442. Tysons Corner: 507/900. @TheTysonsCorner was right.

Let us know when the bugs are worked out (sign wise, etc.). I'd like to drive to Largo confident that I will see a Silver Line train that is actually signed accordingly.

motor

Okay, so thanks to track work on the Red Line my train from Shady Grove arrived 5 min late and I missed the very first EB Silver Line (originally Orange LIne) train to Wiehle *smh*. I did manage to get on the 2nd one though, which left Metro Center at 12:20pm. The operator officially switched over to Silver at 12:30pm at Rosslyn iirc:



A couple of notes from the trip:
- the train started with the normal number of weekend riders, but a ton of people got on at EFC
- You get a great view of Tysons between the Dulles Access Rd and McLean station
- Spring Hill seems to be the most elevated station in the system (even more so than Rhode Island Ave) by my judgement. According to wikipedia the platform is 48-51 ft agl
- As I've mentioned before, it's really weird how the three Tysons stations are all pretty much within a mile of each other, then it's a 5+ mile stretch (I think the longest in the system) to Wiehle-Reston E. As cool as riding through Tysons was, the ride between Spring Hill and Wiehle must be the most boring above-ground segment in the entire system. (I did spot Bentley and Ferrari convertibles on the Dulles Toll Rd though )
- It was interesting to see FFX County Police patrolling the stations and not Metro Transit Police. I seem to remember an incident at the Silver Spring Metro station where the Montgomery County Police claimed that Metro property was under the jurisdiction of the Transit Police primarily
- I definitely like the feel of the interior of the new stations--very light, airy, and contemporary. In terms of exterior architecture I like Spring Hill and McLean the most, by far. Their designs are a nice update to the classic peaked roof designs of some current stations. The other stations look too massive and bulky.
- The "next station" interior LED displays on the outbound train displayed "Silver" the entire way after the changeover from Orange. The inbound train displayed the next stations but it was a bit off (it showed "Ballston-MU" at Virginia Sq for instance)
- Overall, it was a great trip. Now I can't wait to ride the Silver Line Ph II, the DC Streetcar H St line, the Baltimore Red Line, and (most of all) the Purple Line over the coming years...

You can see the rest of my photos from my trip here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsjZwWFVo.

One thing I forgot to mention, when leaving Greensboro station on saturday (around 4:30) a loud siren went off - what is that about?

"YOLO"
One thing I forgot to mention, when leaving Greensboro station on saturday (around 4:30) a loud siren went off - what is that about?

That siren sounds every time an inbound train rolls into that station. It sounds to warn any personnel in the tunnel beyond the station that a train is coming. The same setup is also at the Tysons Corner station, only difference is the siren sounds after a train leaves the station.

Pictures uploaded:

202 Opening day and Phase II progress pictures at DCMP 07 26 2014.

5 Picture of the Greenbelt Test Track and Commissioning Facility.

Essay to follow.

Sand Box John wrote:"YOLO"
One thing I forgot to mention, when leaving Greensboro station on saturday (around 4:30) a loud siren went off - what is that about?

That siren sounds every time an inbound train rolls into that station. It sounds to warn any personnel in the tunnel beyond the station that a train is coming. The same setup is also at the Tysons Corner station, only difference is the siren sounds after a train leaves the station.

The YouTube video WMATA posted had the siren on it ... plus the train sounding its (pathetic) horn when entering a tunnel on the older track. I like the siren.

Great pictures, Sand Box John.

Most or all of this extension's elevated stations have passenger walkways across the broader roads. Was the issue of building them much discussed in the planning stages of this extension? It's likely cheaper than building tunnels, and freeways are not designed for walking across. But the walkways also go over city streets, where people could walk across at intersections. But from the looks of it, those streets are 6 or 8 lanes wide, and that's not very pleasant to walk across.

Another interesting curiosity is the stylistic variation in passenger canopies. That's rather different from the lookalike styling of most of the rest of the system.

Tweet from WMATA:

Silver Line ridership for Tuesday (2nd weekday of service): 33,287 entries/exits at the 5 new stations, up 8% from Mon

I have seen reports that passenger traffic at WFC was down 66% - caused by far fewer buses dropping off passengers there. And there was another report that on the 1st day, Wiehle was the 12th busiest station in the system.