WMATA: Liar Liar, Trains on fire.

So anyone who lives in the DC metro area probably remembers mid march when the Metro was closed for an entire day, following a serious fire at the McPherson Square Station, the second in less than a year, following a fire at L'Enfant Plaza that had killed someone in july of 2015.

Now supposedly the shut down was to allow Metro to identify and replace the insulators that were causing these fires.

So it was kinda awkward when about a week later, Clarendon station caught on fire.

So metro announced they were going to come up with a plan to shut down a "single line" of metro for up to 6 months.

Which doesnt sound that bad.....until you look at a metro map.

As you can see.....most of those lines share most of their track.......there is no way to just shut "one" down.

So metro backed off and instead decided to come up with a different plan....one where they would increase the work done on weekends and overnights and during mid day.

And then, Tenleytown on the red line kinda blew up.....as did Federal Center SW (AFTER it caught fire that same day) (not to mention a half dozen other issues of smoke in that span of time).

So Metro decided to kick it up into emergency mode and quickly announced a massive series of roving shut downs that will last up to a year.

Here is the list (taken from greatergreaterwashington.org)

When	Where	Color(s)	What
June 4-19	Franconia to Van Dorn	Blue	Single-tracking
June 20-July 3	Greenbelt to College Park	Green	Single-tracking
July 5 @ 10 pm - July 12	Nat'l Airport to Braddock Road	Blue/Yellow	Full shutdown
July 12-19	Nat'l Airport to Pentagon City	Blue/Yellow	Full shutdown
July 20-31	Greenbelt to College Park	Green	Single-tracking
August 1-8	Takoma to Silver Spring	Red	Single-tracking
August 9-19	Shady Grove to Twinbrook	Red	Single-tracking
Aug. 20-Sept. 6	Eastern Market to Minnesota Ave/Benning Rd	Yl/Or/Bl	Full shutdown
Sept. 9-Oct. 21	Vienna to West Falls Church	Orange	Single-tracking
Oct. 9-Nov. 2	NoMa to Fort Totten	Red	Full shutdown
November 2-12	W. Falls Ch. to E. Falls Ch.	Orange	Single-tracking
Nov. 12-Dec. 5	East Falls Church to Ballston	Orange/Silver	Single-tracking
December 6-24	Pentagon to Rosslyn	Blue	Full shutdown
Jan. 2-March 7	Friendship Heights to Medical Center	Red	Single-tracking after 8 pm
March 6-14	W. Falls Ch. to E. Falls Ch.	Orange	Single-tracking
April 16-May 8	Braddock Road to Huntington/Van Dorn St.	Blue/Yellow	Single-tracking

And this is where things kinda get a little weird.

You notice what stations ARNT included? The ones that keep catching on fire. Now sure, maybe you say they fixed those.

Fair enough....but heres Metro's own map of what stations were most likely going to have issues after the initial shut down in March:

Notice that with one exception (Stadium Armory), none of those stations are on the long term repair list.....including the area between L'Enfant and Federal Center SW, which is responsible for 3 of the 6 fires and explosions I mentioned.

Now Metro's defense for this when called on it was that what they were repairing for here was not the fires (despite 2+ an explosion)...but the old worn out wooden rail ties on the oldest parts of the above ground tracks. 

Which is why, despite all the fires (even the half dozen or so I didnt mention) being underground, the repair map looks something like this:

Despite the underground section of the system looking something like this

Cause I guess the fires arnt that big a deal right?

Problem is though....even using the rail tie thing it doesnt really work. Look at the first two sections they are working on, those stations were all opened in the mid 90's. Old yes....oldest part of the lines? not really, except for the silver line the are the newest parts. But ok to be fair, they do eventually move on to some older parts (like dunn loring and Vienna)

By the way, there is something else worth noting here......theres not much service as it stands on that green line section they've singled out as it stands......because its been closed on and off for weeks for rail testing of the brand new series 7000 rail car.

You'd think they could have done the repairs at the same time right?

Well maybe....unless the cars are the problem.

According to what information I can find, the new series 7000 cars weight significantly more than the previous generations......enough to cause problems with the weights of the trains breaking the wooden rail ties of above ground stations.

Now while the series 7000 has been plagued by problems and issues.....this doesn't appear to be one of them....they are as advertised in this category.

Now its likely that only SOME rails are at risk. This might explain why Metro has set aside 7 days to replace the rails between the national airport and braddock road station a distance of roughly 4 miles, but require 2 separate repairs totaling 23 days to make a similar length repair (5 miles) between College park and Greenbelt.

Still even if this is true....it has nothing to do with preventing fire.

It also begs the question of what the hell is going on at the two Falls Church stations....they are also being shut down for a total of 24 days between 2 repairs.....except that, those rails were just replaced about 4 years ago to make room for the silver line.  And those stations are only about 2 miles apart.....so thats a lot of work for a very short, very new distance of track. Oddly by the way, the new part of the silver line itself is fine and its tracks wont be affected according to metro.....its tracks that were done at the very same time as the bits between the falls church stations.

Have to be honest...at this point those 2 repairs are looking less like replacing aged parts....and more like a cover up for incompetent and mistakes made while creating the silver line.

Also, as a possibly related note, anyone else find it odd that as soon as ANYTHING breaks on the shared orange/blue/silver line part of the track, or on weekends and non rush hours metro pulls Silver line service back to East Falls Church or Ballston? This includes when Orange and Blue lines are still running full service?

And thats something they dont do with any other line....but you know I'm sure if they had made some kind of mistake they would just tell us right? (just like how they didnt actually have enough trains to run the silver line, so adding the silver line reduced service across the other lines....which they tried to compensate for by basically eliminating the blue line as much as they could)

By the way, it doesnt look like I'm the only one who might be a little suspicious of metro's motivations.

This morning the FTA (which was granted oversight of metro last year) ordered metro to begin a "safety stand down" to actually address the problems of the fires.

As part of this order, the FTA has decided that fault for much of the chaos at the Tenlytown and Federal Center fires rested with metro employees not actually being trained properly and the  Rail Operations Control Center for the entire system being disorganized, poorly trained and basically incompetent.

So they are now all ordered to be retrained to FTA standards by may 16th.

However the order contained some additional information as well....specifically "To cut the risk of track fires, federal officials are recommending Metro run shorter trains (6-car instead of 8-car) at slower speeds to put less stress on its track power system."

Now this actually probably WILL fix the system, albeit prehaps not in the way the FTA has in mind.

So in addition to being heavier, several places state the series 7000 cars actually use more power than the previous models....in other words they are overtaxing the electrical system.  

Now if your starting to think that it looks like Metro bought rail cars that their system wasnt designed for (based on weight and electrical usage)....well lets just say I cant prove you wrong.

There is one other design aspect of the Series 7000 trains that is worth mentioning that their coupling system is kinda unique as specific couplings can only connect to that same coupling.

Now the key take away here though is that only the cars marked "A" have a cab in them.....meaning only they can be used to drive the train.

And there is no possible 6 car configuration that can have an "A" car at either end...it has to be either 4 or 8. (it should be noted that apparently the "+" between B and the ones between A are not interchangeable with each other)

Meaning that, as long as the FTA mandate is in place....and followed, the 7000 series trains cant run...and theres evidence to suggest (based on weight/power usage) they are what is causing the fires (which it should be mentioned only started happening on a regular basis once the 7000's were phased in)

So Problem solved in that case.

Kinda, I mean the older cars do also have safety issues (see the red line crash) so its not perfect and metro still needs work....to be fair theyve been working on repairs since long before the 7000's showed up......but it would fix the fire problems.

Now lastly it should be noted that, if you go to metro's website right now (530pm 5/7/16) you will find absolutely zero information relating to the FTA orders.....it appears despite the immediately effective nature of the order, Metro seems to not be complying....or at least not informing their riders about it if they plan to comply (as its a weekend its not likely youd see any difference if they were or wernt complying until monday)

Because hey, who needs safety and informed riders....we have a series of construction, expansion, and rail car purchase mistakes to cover up.,...and luckily these fires give us a nice smokescreen (pun intended) to do, while getting the public to think we are doing a good job.