A very transit-themed weekend…
April 11, 2024, 11:57 PM
On March 28 and 29, I had two very distinct transit-themed adventures. One day was a bus adventure, and the other was rail-related.
The bus adventure came first, on Thursday, March 28. That one has some background to it. First of all, every year for the past several years, I have had what I call a “tax party” with my friend Matthew, where we get together and we take care of our various taxes. Generally speaking, we go somewhere to eat, and then I sit down with the computer and do my own taxes, I do Matthew’s taxes, and I do Elyse’s taxes. This year, the tax party was done in two stages, as Matthew had to cancel at the last minute due to something unforeseen coming up, so I did the taxes for Elyse and me on the original date back in February (where I owed a ton of money because of my photography earnings), and then rescheduled with Matthew for a later date, impressing on him that he really shouldn’t postpone again, since the due date for taxes is a hard date, and you really don’t want to be a last-minute filer if you can avoid it. So we planned the date, and that was that. Now Matthew is also a bit of a transit enthusiast, and has pursued some opportunities in the transit field, but has always gotten cold feet when it came to the thought of actually operating a bus.
Now, along with Elyse, I am also on the board of directors for Commonwealth Coach & Trolley, which is a bus museum based in Roanoke, Virginia. Many of us on the board are in the DC area, and some of our vehicles do stay up in the DC area for various reasons. So I pitched the idea to have a small outreach event, taking a bus out for a spin and going to visit Matthew in that. So Elyse and I went down to where the bus was kept, parked the HR-V, and took out the bus. The bus that we had was former Fairfax Connector bus 7754, a 1991 Orion I, which we tend to call MATT, which stands for “Mobile Accessible Travel Training”. As I understand it, this bus originally operated as a regular Fairfax bus, and then was converted to a training vehicle to help older adults and people with disabilities learn to use public transit. I’m not exactly sure how it all worked, but it was fitted with some extra doodads like TV monitors, and has a desk with a swivel seat in the back of it, while the area forward of the rear door has updated seats.
And here’s what MATT looks like:
And of course, here’s a selfie of me in the seat:
Once we pre-tripped it and got started, we took some time to fuel it at a gas station near where we picked it up in Fort Washington:
Then we hit the road in earnest. First coming out, I was a bit nervous, as I had never driven an Orion I before, and it had been about nine months since the last time I had driven a bus at all. But after a few minutes with it, no problem. Operator Schumin was back in full form. It was a pretty bouncy bus, but I soon learned how to ride with it, bouncing right along with it. I took Indian Head Highway to the Beltway, and then took the inner loop around to Route 7 in Virginia. We then took Route 7 to Reston, and made our way to Matthew’s apartment complex, where we parked the bus on the street:
Yep, I put it right in his regular bus stop. After all, it is a bus. Therefore, it stops in a bus stop. Looking at the accuracy of that stop right there, I couldn’t help but think, yep, I’ve still got it.
Then you should have seen Matthew’s face when he saw the bus outside, with us standing next to it. See, I didn’t tell him that I was bringing a bus out. That was our little surprise. In planning this with him, I left that part out entirely, and told him on the day of that I had to run a quick errand and then I would be right over. That errand, of course, was to pick up the bus down in Fort Washington. The reason that I did this was because I didn’t want to give Matthew a chance to get nervous and decline it. So I just sprang it on him, i.e. here it is. He even remarked that I knew him well, recognizing that he would have done exactly what I avoided by maintaining the element of surprise.
We then went down to Starbucks, where we got drinks, and I did Matthew’s taxes. We parked the bus in the back of the lot while we were inside. Generally speaking, when you have a large vehicle like we did, you park it in a somewhat remote part of the lot, largely to give yourself space to maneuver, i.e. little likelihood that someone will box you in.
After that, we went to pick up another friend of ours, a guy named Jimmy. I know Jimmy through Matthew, and we’ve always gotten along well. Jimmy had expressed interest in getting together to talk about possibly getting a job in the transit industry, and we all agreed to get together as a group. I didn’t tell him about the bus, either. Jimmy found out when he saw a bus that looked kind of like a Fairfax Connector bus roll up his street and stop in front of his house. He remarked that, upon seeing the bus, that it was funny because Fairfax Connector doesn’t normally go up his street. Then he saw me, and was like, ah.
We then all went to Wiehle-Reston East station, because Elyse wanted me to take it through the bus loop there. Okay. So here’s the bus at Wiehle:
Not bad. We then headed out to Leesburg, where everyone got to take the bus for a quick spin around an empty parking lot. We used the parking lot in front of the old Walmart (now a Floor & Decor), because I figured that it would be empty – and it was. First, Elyse took it around:
Elyse does a lot of site work with Commonwealth Coach down in Roanoke, and as such, was no stranger to moving buses around, nor to operating MATT, specifically. Elyse did pretty well, as one would expect.
After Elyse, Jimmy took the helm, and he did pretty well for someone who had never operated a bus before. He also exemplified what I’ve said for a long time, that if a CDL holder ever tells you that they have never gone over a curb, rest assured that they are lying. Jimmy took a turn a little too tightly, and went over a curb with the rear wheel. We’ve all done it when we’ve learned how to operate these beasts.
Then Matthew took it around:
I absolutely wanted to put him in the seat in order to get a feel for how a bus handles. He did very well, and didn’t get the bus stuck anywhere that would require reversing, nor did he go over any curbs. Afterwards, I said, “It wasn’t that scary, now, was it?” He agreed that it wasn’t that bad. I wanted to break that ice for him in a controlled environment, especially since some transit agencies (such as the one that I work for) don’t use a parking lot for training purposes before putting people out on real roads.
From here, we headed over to a Sheetz in Sterling, where we got food. I parked behind the building in that case:
From there, things started to wind down. We went to Jimmy’s house and dropped him off, and then I dropped Matthew off at his bus stop. Elyse and I then headed into Alexandria to say hi to our friend Montigue, who would be on a layover behind the Potomac Yard shopping center. I took the bus down I-66 for some ways, which was super fun. The bus is governed at 60 MPH, which made things easy, because you just floor it and go. We took 66 down to the Beltway, and then took Route 50 a ways before reaching Route 1. There, we said hello to Montigue, and then we continued.
At this point, it was getting a bit late, but we also needed to go to the bathroom. We found our way to a friendly restroom that was open, i.e. we hit up Braddock Road station:
We knew that a Metro station would have a restroom facility, so there you were. And then from there, we drove the rest of the way to Fort Washington to return the bus, and that was that. All in all, that was a fun adventure, and I did about 127 miles with MATT, i.e. I put in about a full day’s worth of driving on that bus. No wonder why I was tired at the end of the day. But the outreach mission was successful.
Then the next day, I was going down to the National Mall to see Metro’s “Fleet of the Future” event. There, Metro was displaying a “soft mockup” of the new 8000-Series railcar, which will be arriving in a few years to replace the Breda railcars, which are reaching end of life. They also had a New Flyer XE60 on display, which is a battery-electric articulated bus. I went primarily to see the railcar mockup, because I wanted to know what kind of future was riding on Metro. Recall that I visited the unveiling of the 7000-Series ten years ago, and so I had to see the 8000s, even if this is a prototype made of wood and not a real railcar.
The tent that the Fleet of the Future expo was housed in on the Mall.
The front of the 8000 end of the mockup. Note the smaller Metro logo compared to the 7000s, and all-LED lighting on the car. This end is lit up as if it was active as the operating cab – thus the headlights and running lights.
The 8001 end of the mockup. It’s lit up like it’s not active, thus the taillights and marker lights’ being visible. I question whether the final product will look anything like this, though. On the 7000-Series cars, the front end of the odd-numbered cars, which do not have cabs and therefore will never be placed in the lead position on the mainline, are very basic, i.e. plain steel with headlights and taillights. After all, why go to effort to dress something up that no one will see? I suspect that the final 8000-Series cars will have a similarly plain treatment, and that this treatment is just for appearances on the mockup.
The forward end of 8000. These cars are similar to the legacy fleet, in that they will have an aluminum carbody, and have a stripe along their sides, much like the legacy fleet. The stripe has a hexagonal pattern on it, which is something new compared to the plain brown on the legacy fleet. I wonder how well that pattern ages, though. Also note the camera near the top of the carbody, just behind the number. That exterior camera is something new, and hopefully makes for more efficient servicing of platforms.
Amber and blue exterior lights. On the Rohr, Breda, and Alstom railcars, these are brake fault lights. On the CAF railcars, these looked the same, but provided indications related to train control. These lights do not exist on the 7000-Series railcars. I suspect that these are going to be brake fault lights on the new railcars, but I was not able to get confirmation of this.
Green exterior light. No WMATA railcar has ever had a green light on the side of the railcar before. I could see a green light’s being an indicator for either doors or brakes, but none of the people working the event knew what it indicated.
That ended up being a bit of a common thread at this event, that the people working the event didn’t know the answers to a lot of my questions. I’m willing to cut them a lot of slack on that, though, because my questions were of a far more technical nature than I imagine that most of them had been prepared to address.
Front end of car 8001, showing bulkhead door with windshield wiper and hostler panel.
Emergency intercom. Nothing new here compared to what exists on other railcar series.
Hostler control panel. This is similar to what exists on the 7000-Series.
Digital display screen, similar to what exists on the 7000-Series.
This digital screen, mounted perpendicular to the wall next to a door, is new on the 8000-Series. The mockup shows an electronic strip map and a news feed. I don’t quite know what I feel about having a news ticker on the railcars, though.
Electronic strip map, similar to that which appears on the 7000-Series cars, and is the same as on the R160 cars in New York.
Ceiling display, same as on the 7000-Series.
The mural around the open gangway between the two railcars contains a mural of sorts showing various DC-area landmarks, including the Lincoln Memorial and the Mormon Temple. I am concerned about the durability of these murals, and how they will fare when they have to be cleaned of graffiti. The wall panels on the 7000-Series have a speckled pattern on them, and some graffiti has left some “ghosting” after being removed. Hopefully these murals will be designed so that this ghosting does not happen, because otherwise, they’re going to look really bad really quickly. I personally would prefer that there be no murals at all, as I consider them to be a bit cheesy, but failing that, hopefully they will hold up to abuse.
Seats on the mockup, largely similar to those found on the 7000-Series. We were told not to pay attention to the materials used in the seat cushions (hard plastic), because those just for purposes of the mockup. Though if Metro went with hard plastic, they wouldn’t be the first. All of New York’s current subway fleet uses hard plastic for seats, which is easy to maintain and clean. They had a display of the proper seats outside of the mockup, which I forgot to check out before I left (whoops).
Seating layout on the 8000-Series. These cars will have a new layout, with transverse seating on one side, and longitudinal seating on the other, making for wider aisles, and hopefully encouraging people to please move to the center of the car when boarding.
Three-handled pole in front of the center doors. Metro had previously tested a multi-handled pole on car 3283 back in 2007, though the earlier one was flat, while this one was more three-dimensional. At the time, I had panned the concept as being too complicated for not enough benefit. Considering that it did not appear on the 7000-Series, I had thought that Metro had abandoned the concept. The biggest problem with this implementation, though, is the placement. This is right smack in the center of the railcar, in front of the center doors, which is where the most of the accommodations for wheelchairs are located. I feel like this is a large obstruction for wheelchair users to get around, and also encourages crowding around the doors rather than moving further into the railcar. It also is the only thing bolted to the floor on these cars, while on the 7000-Series, all of the hardware is either attached to the walls or hung from the ceiling. I certainly hope that this pole doesn’t make it to the final cars.
And now, let’s check out the cab.
Left and right-side door control panels. These are the same general idea as on the 7000-Series, but the left one is lower than its 7K equivalent, and the right one is more compact compared to its 7K equivalent. Note what appears to be a screen above these panels on both sides. My understanding is that the feed from the exterior cameras that I showed earlier will display here.
Left-side PA microphone. This is not new, first appearing on the 6000-Series, retrofitted on the 2000, 3000, 4000, and 5000-Series cars, and also implemented on the 7000-Series. My only concern here is that it is mounted very low, but I suspect that this is just a product of the mockup, since it uses the same prop piece as the emergency intercoms, i.e. don’t take it literally, because it’s not the exact piece.
Jump seat on the left side of the cab. This was first implemented on the 7000-Series, which itself replaced a full standard passenger seat in the area that becomes the cab. This seat is a bit more minimalistic compared to the 7000, but was comfortable enough, and eliminates a problem with the 7000-Series jump seat where operators tend to stuff trash behind the back.
8000-Series operating console. It is largely similar to the 7000-Series console, but with a slightly different button arrangement, and larger screens. The two analog gauges on the 7000-Series, for brake cylinder and brake pipe pressures, are missing here and will be displayed on-screen instead, which means that, as I understand it, the 8000-Series has a full glass cockpit.
The master controller. I am pretty sure that this is a standard 7000-Series master controller pulled from stock, but I can’t imagine that the 8000-Series master controller will be much different.
Besides the passenger seats, I also forgot to take a photograph of the operator’s seat. Fortunately, I found one on Flickr. It’s still a USSC, just like the other series, but unlike the 7000-Series, and similar to the older cars, this one swivels freely. This 8000-Series seat also has a tilt function for the bottom part of the seat, allowing it to tilt back, along with an adjustment function for the back part of the seat. It also appears to have a more quilted appearance. It felt comfortable enough when I sat in it, but I couldn’t find all of the adjustment levers on it.
So that’s the 8000-Series soft mockup. As I understand it, nothing is completely set in stone here, and everything is still subject to change. But this does seem to confirm what we all suspected, that these will be mostly a refinement of the 7000-Series car design, like the differences between the Rohr and Breda railcars, where the layout and other features were refined, and not a massive paradigm shift, as happened when the 7000-Series was introduced. I also suspect that it’s going to be the same “Mildred” (my name for the 7000-Series voice) making the announcements on the 8000-Series. Additionally, no word on whether these cars will be
Then I checked out the bus part of the display, which was parked on the street nearby:
Bus 1060, which is a New Flyer XE60, i.e. a battery-electric articulated bus. This is a standard New Flyer Xcelsior, operating on a battery rather than diesel.
I didn’t do any major photographing of the bus, not only because I was running out of time before the event closed for the night, but also because it’s not a significant visual change from what we’re used to as far as WMATA buses go.
Then on the way out, I got a photo of Metro Center while I was transferring:
This one shows the new PIDS screens, which were updated to flat-panel monitors last year.
So there you have it. Two transit-themed adventures in one weekend. I was tired by the end of it, but it was worth it because I had a lot of fun.
Categories: Alexandria, Driving, Fairfax County, Loudoun County, Matthew, Transit, Washington DC, WMATA