MARC and VRE Railfan Windows

Hello all!

I always like looking out of the back of trains looking at signals and lineside equipment and I live near DC but always use Metro and I rarely every have used VRE or MARC but next week I plan to do a little survery of the lines in the area and I wanted to know if on some trains if you can see out or not.

So starting with VRE, is there a set direction which way the cabs are facing in the consist (North or South)? Also, can you always see out the windows or are they shut out on the lower level on the cab cars. From this I can assume that the window is at least sometimes accessible:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSUZAo72KJY

But confirmation would be great.



And with MARC can you get a similar view as in that video. I have ridden in a single level MARC cab coach south (with it leading) from NCR to WUS and the cab area was sealed off with black tint on the door into the cab so I couldn't see. Is this like this on all MARC single levels, would that door be open so I could stand back there if the engine was leading?

With the Kawasaki bi-levels can you see out back always or not?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Davis

As a mostly general rule - the VRE cab cars lead going North (Towards DC)...
You can stand and look through the door window (Done it myself several times)....

On MARC, all the windows are tinted (single level and bilevels). Locomotives are on the North end, cab cars lead headed towards Washington. When headed north (locomotive leading), the cab on the other end is still sealed off.

HokieNav wrote:On MARC, all the windows are tinted (single level and bilevels). Locomotives are on the North end, cab cars lead headed towards Washington. When headed north (locomotive leading), the cab on the other end is still sealed off.

That is because you guys on MARC have the Kawasaki cab cars and I remember that problem when we had them....

The VRE uses Gallery cars where the cab is on the 2nd level and because of that does not block the door/window on the leading edge of the cab car...

So I'm guessing there is no way whatsoever to see out of the back of MARC trains.

Davis

Not with the Kawasaki cars.

strench707 wrote:So I'm guessing there is no way whatsoever to see out of the back of MARC trains.

Davis

nope

dt_rt40 wrote:Not with the Kawasaki cars.

...or the Nippon-Sharyo/Sumitomo single level cab cars since they're tinted as well. Also MARC's old gallery cars are all cabless coaches.

Damn thats too bad. Then I guess there's no real way for me to see the Camden Line except walking the RoW each section at a time.

On the Brunswick I could look out the back of the Capitol Limited (but that wouldn't help for the Frederick Branch), on the Penn any Amtrak I could look out the back of but on the Camden there's nothing.

Davis