Railroad Forums 

  • Silver Line Vibrations

  • Discussion related to DC area passenger rail services from Northern Virginia to Baltimore, MD. Includes Light Rail and Baltimore Subway.
Discussion related to DC area passenger rail services from Northern Virginia to Baltimore, MD. Includes Light Rail and Baltimore Subway.

Moderators: mtuandrew, therock, Robert Paniagua

 #1476847  by KTHW
 
I ride the Silver Line our to Spring Hill everyday and I’ve noticed that the train vibrates violently on the track along the Dulles toll road between East Falls Church and McLean right before the crossover inbound and after the crossover outbound. Anyone know what the reason for these violent shakes are? They’re bad enough that I’ve seen people looking around the railcar in concern during them.
 #1477017  by Sand Box John
 
"KTHW"
I ride the Silver Line our to Spring Hill everyday and I’ve noticed that the train vibrates violently on the track along the Dulles toll road between East Falls Church and McLean right before the crossover inbound and after the crossover outbound. Anyone know what the reason for these violent shakes are? They’re bad enough that I’ve seen people looking around the railcar in concern during them.


Sounds like it might be a sub roadbed settlement issue. There are storm drain pipes and third rail conduits under the roadbed in that area.
 #1477172  by JackRussell
 
YOLO wrote:I ride thru this area daily and have noticed no severe vibrations
The only vibrations I have noticed are when you go through the switches to get onto the Silver line spur. But it didn't strike me as abnormal.
 #1481163  by YOLO
 
I am now noticing violent vibrations between EFC and McLean on the ground level tracks on the toll road, I wonder what changed.
 #1481170  by srepetsk
 
YOLO wrote:I am now noticing violent vibrations between EFC and McLean on the ground level tracks on the toll road, I wonder what changed.
I notice this many days on my ride to work out to Wiehle too; both EFC-McLean and Spring Hill-Wiehle have some sections which seem to produce very noticeable vibration. I've had it happen on both 7Ks and legacy cars, although it seems to predominantly occur around 40-50mph from my experience. The sections that it occurs over are a few hundred to a couple thousand feet in length.

WMATA seems to be aware of the issue, although I don't think they've figured out the cause yet. I was on a train a few weeks back along with an ERT group performing riding inspections between Wiehle and Spring Hill, and overnight on the 27th-28th a track crew performed a few riding inspections and then a lengthy track walk from McLean most of the way to EFC (to the N91 yard lead). They reported rough vibrations between N2 550 and N2 600 during that inspection.

I wonder if the cement ties have anything to do with it?