Metro News Release

For immediate release: October 7, 2005

How Did Metro Spend its Summer Vacation" By Working on the Railroad

Now that summer has come and gone and people are back from vacation and back in school, Metro wants to tell its passengers how it spent its summer vacation.

This summer and continuing into the fall, Metro has been working on the railroad to improve service reliability now, and into the future. As the Metrorail system ages (Metrorail celebrates its 30^th anniversary next year), the tracks require more maintenance. As a result, single tracking, and partial shutdowns have become very important to enable the work to take place.

While a section of track is being repaired, trains share one side of the tracks in the affected work area. This is done to minimize inconvenience to passengers and to get the necessary repairs finished quickly. In most cases, track work is completed during the weekends and may result in trains running less frequently. "We also take into consideration when events are taking place around the area and may postpone the track work on specific weekends," said Steven Feil, Metro Chief Operating Officer for Metrorail.

Metro’s Track and Structures/Systems Maintenance Department, which is responsible for the daily maintenance of the Metrorail system, spent the summer working on the railroad replacing track switches, installing new rail, tunnel cleaning and track bed cleaning. Specific highlights include:

Track switches are a portion of the track that allows trains to switch from one track to another. This summer, Metro replaced 27 track switches at Twinbrook, Silver Spring and Takoma on the Red Line; West Falls Church on the Orange Line; outside Stadium-Armory on the Blue and Orange Line; and outside the Braddock Road Metrorail station on the Blue and Yellow Line.

This month, Metro will replace the track switch at the East Falls Church Metrorail station, and next month at the Braddock Road Metrorail station.

Metro installed 11,117 feet of new continuous welded rail which are long lengths of rail welded together. Throughout the year, rail must be replaced to ensure safety when worn, corroded or defective rail is identified.

This summer, Metro’s Board of Directors approved $4.3 million in funding for track maintenance and rehabilitation projects through the Metro Matters funding agreement to purchase a minimum of 400 tons (20,400 feet) of rail per year for up to four years and the labor and materials to weld rail sections in place as part of its ongoing maintenance cycle to replace worn running rail.

Metro will purchase rail in 78-foot lengths to be welded into 390-foot lengths. This will allow rail installation of greater lengths to be accomplished with less effort and manpower than purchasing and welding the traditional 39-foot lengths. This makes for an easier installation because it allows for better control of the welding process and is more efficient in transporting and installing the rail.

Metro also installed 3,940 feet of the traditional 39-foot rail sections throughout the rail system.

Metro employees also conducted a system-wide cleaning of 67,300 feet of track and 66,800 feet of tunnels in the Metrorail system. Track bed and tunnel cleaning is essential to maintaining a safe and reliable rail service. It involves the removal of trash, debris, and newspapers from the right-of-way and the cleaning of the electrified third rail insulators, which support the electrification required to provide power to operate the trains.

Metro also rehabilitated 10 piers (the cement columns that hold up the elevated portion of tracks) at the Dunn Loring rail bridge on the Orange Line, and 14 piers at the Grosvenor-Strathmore rail bridge on the Red Line. This work required personnel to elevate the piers along a portion of the rail bridge and install new grout pads, which are the bases of the piers. Once the new bases were installed, the piers were lowered again. This safety-sensitive work required Metro to shut down the Orange Line between West Falls Church-VT/UVA and Vienna/Fairfax-GMU for one weekend in July and one weekend in August, and the Red Line between Grosvenor-Strathmore and Medical Center for one weekend in August and another September.

"This summer, we developed an aggressive track maintenance schedule to do as much critical work as necessary to maintain the safety and integrity of the Metrorail system," said Mr. Feil. "We understand that while we do this work, our passengers will be impacted either by a single-track or a shutdown, and we apologize for that. However, we hope our passengers will understand this work is necessary and will benefit not only them, but the transit system in the future by completing this necessary work."

News release issued on October 7, 2005.