Tag Archives: Washington DC

Bus Photo of the Month: October 2018

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Orion V 70

Orion V 70

Location: South Eads Street at South Rotary Road, Arlington, VA
Operator of Vehicle: Alexandria Transit Company
Date of Photo: July 19, 2018

For those of you who know the DC area well, your first reaction to seeing this photo is that one isn’t supposed to be taking photographs at this location.  It is a reasonable first reaction, as this photo was taken on the Pentagon Reservation, and photography is generally prohibited there.  But notice my use of the word generally.  Photography is allowed at the September 11th Memorial adjacent to the Pentagon (though the DoD was reluctant to permit this when the memorial opened). However, this isn’t where the photo was taken.  So what’s the secret?  I did have authorization to be taking photos at the Pentagon that morning, and there were Pentagon police officers nearby at the time.  However, like many things that go on at the Pentagon, I can’t really reveal how I got this authorization or how one might go about doing so (other than to say the circumstances were somewhat unique, so anyone else trying to replicate them is likely to be unsuccessful).  

As for the bus itself, as rare as photos of DASH buses of any sort at the Pentagon might be, photos of Orion V DASH buses are becoming a rarity as well.  This specific unit is about 16 years old, is among the last high floor buses remaining in the DASH fleet.  Catch these while you can anywhere in the DASH service area, because they are due to be reassigned to the “big bus garage in the sky” in the very near future as newer Gillig Advantages arrive.

For more photos of DASH, please click here.

Bus Photo of the Month: September 2018

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Gillig Advantage 3710

Gillig Advantage 3710

Location: Campus Drive at Union Drive, College Park, MD
Operator of Vehicle: University of Maryland Department of Transportation Services
Date of Photo: March 30, 2017

The University of Maryland Athletics Department isn’t only making news because of issues regardings its football team.  Recently, the Athletics Department announced it would help to fund some weekend services on campus that would otherwise have been discontinued this fall due to budget shortfalls.  The University of Maryland has one of the largest student operated bus systems in the United States, with nearly 3 million trips annually on board a fleet of about 60 buses.  While the system is overseen by professional staff, many system functions including dispatching, training, and operating are carried out by students most of the time.  How many of those student operators might be transit fans?

For more photos of Shuttle-UM, please click here.

Rail Photo of the Month: August 2018

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Kawasaki 7028

Kawasaki 7028

Location: Columbia Heights Station, Washington, DC
Operator of Vehicle: Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Date of Photo: August 30, 2015

If you happen to have been on the Washington Metro in recent weeks, you’ve probably heard a train declare “This is a 7000 Series train” as its doors open at each station.  This is being done as a safety initiative for passengers with vision impairments, the merits of which will not be discussed here at this time.  However, transit fans and frequent Metrorail riders probably do not need to be told when they are boarding a 7000 Series train, as these cars are quite different than any others that have operated on “America’s subway.”  The cars are made of stainless steel. They feature the new “disco ball logo” rather than the traditional brown stripe along the sides. The trains have a new interior color scheme, automated announcements, multiple interior LED and LCD displays, an updated cab layout, and numerous other features.  Personally, I’m a much bigger fan of the “legacy fleet” than the 7000 Series as the former is what I grew up riding and am most familiar with.  However, the 7000 Series cars are certainly recognizable by many riders, not just transit fans, and anecdotally, the riding public has enjoyed riding these cars since they entered service in 2015.  

For more photos of WMATA’s Kawasaki 7000 Series cars, please click here.

New Photos from Israel & Washington, DC Added

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VDL Bus SB230 76273
The summer travel season is well underway, and photos from my adventures in May and June are now available for your viewing pleasure here on Oren’s Transit Page.

Most of the new content can be found in the Israel section, where you will find new photos of the Jerusalem Light Rail, Egged buses in Jerusalem (including the Solaris Urbino 18 unit currently on trial), Egged Ta’avura buses in Jerusalem, Afikim buses in Jerusalem, Kavim buses in Jerusalem, and Superbus buses in both Jerusalem and Tiberias.  If you haven’t been to Israel lately, with the entry of the Golden Dragon and Yutong bus models from China and Solaris buses from Poland in to the Israeli market, there is quite a bit of diversity in Israeli operators’ fleets beyond the typical MAN and Mercedes-Benz buses that have dominated the scene for years.  You can also find photos of the exterior of the new Jerusalem High Speed Railway station (the interior of the much delayed station will be open to the public this fall if you believe the latest rumors).

In addition, new photos of various WMATA equipment types have been added as well.

Here is the complete list of pages with new photos in this update:

Just in time for the summer travel season, Winter 2018 photos have been posted!

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Gillig Advantage 458
The first part of 2018 here at Oren’s Transit Page headquarters has been busy.  The next few months also have some travel planned both to places I’ve been before as well as new ones, but in this post, I wish to let everyone know that new photos from the past few months from a variety of places are now available on this site.  You may have noticed some recent photos of the month were from locations that had not been featured on any part of this site before.

I made my first trip to Memphis, Tennessee back in November 2017.  Unfortunately, it was before that city’s Main Street Trolley reopened, but I guess that just means I’ll have to go back some day.  However, I did get some photos of MATA’s all Gillig bus fleet, which you can find in the new Memphis section on this site.

CAF-GEE UM12
In January, I spent two weeks in Brazil and Argentina.  While I had been to Rio de Janerio back in 2010, I didn’t take any photos of that city’s subway on that trip.  That has changed, and there is now a Rio Metro page here on Oren’s Transit Page.  There are also additions to the existing Rio bus page.  After Rio, I was in Iguazu Falls, where I had also been in 2010, but there are no new photos from here.  The following stop was Buenos Aires, marking my first time in that city, and I have plenty of photos from that city.  The Buenos Aires Subte (Underground), while small, has a rich history and also has the distinction of serving the southernmost subway station in the world. 
Micro Ómnibus 45 S.A. 35
You might recognize some of the 6000 Series cars on the Buenos Aires pages from Madrid and that would make sense, as Buenos Aires bought them secondhand from the Spanish capital.  The network of buses, known locally as colectivos, is an impressive sight to see as they crisscross the city in just about every imaginable direction.  Each colectivo line is operated by a private firm, and each private firm only operates a handful of lines at most.  The buses on each route have unique liveries to make identification by waiting passengers easier.  

At the end of January, I was in the Boston area for a weekend, and at the start of April I spent a weekend in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

As is often the case, I also added a number of photos from around the DC area.  Most of the new photos are additions to pre-existing galleries, but I also finally added photos of Shuttle UM, the campus bus system for the University of Maryland-College Park, and Loundoun County Transit.

Below, you’ll find a complete list of pages with new photos.  Enjoy! 

Gillig Advantage 3710

 

Oren’s Reading List: Riding an entire system in a day

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Bombardier Mark II Car 204
The Vancouver Sun reports that today, a man named Stephen Quinlan intends to ride the entire Vancouver SkyTrain system in about 3 hours, in order to set the Guinness World Record for achieving the feat.  You can read about his preparations here.  I made no effort to set a record while doing so, but I did ride the entire Skytrain in a single day on August 7, 2007, back when it only had two lines and fewer stations.  It isn’t the first system I rode in an entire day, either.  The largest system I rode in a single day is the Washington, DC Metrorail (in 2002, when it only had 83 stations), but I have also explored the entire TTC Subway (2007), San Juan Tren Urbano (2016), Glasgow Underground (2005), Rome Metro (2008), Jerusalem Light Rail (on opening day in 2011) and Haifa Carmelit (2007) in a single day, and did the Tren Urbano, Jerusalem Light Rail, and Carmelit on a single fare.  Needless to say, it is a much easier feat to achieve on a smaller system such as Haifa’s (the smallest subway in the world) as opposed to a city such as London or New York, but that is to be expected.  

Have you ever tried to ride an entire system in one day?  Were you successful?  Were you trying to set any records?  Feel free to post your answers in the comments below!

Oren’s Reading List is an occasional feature on The Travelogue in which I share articles that I’ve read that might also be of interest to the readers of this website.

Rail Photo of the Month: April 2018

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CAF 5085

CAF 5085

Location: Rockville Station, Rockville, MD
Operator of Vehicle: Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Date of Photo: December 12, 2017

On some subway systems, each line has a dedicated (or nearly dedicated) fleet of cars.  For example, you won’t find anything but 1995 Stock on the Northern Line in London.  Or in New York, seeing something other than an R62A on the 1 train is a notable event.  However, in Washington, DC, this generally has not been the case.  Except for a period when all the 2000 Series Breda cars were assigned to the Red Line shortly after their delivery, WMATA has put just about every car on every line, especially when it was “bellying” the 1000 Series cars and later the 4000 Series cars between 2009 and 2017.  Now that those car types have been retired as of last summer, WMATA has decided to assign certain cars to certain lines with generally few exceptions.  In the case of the Red Line, this means seeing anything other than 3000 Series Breda Rehabs or 7000 Series Kawasakis is now a notable event.  One of those moments is captured here, when CAF 5085 made it on to the Red Line in December 2017. 

Do you like “predictability” in your transit car assignments when transitfanning, or is it more fun when any type of train or bus might show up?

For more photos of WMATA CAF 5000 Series cars, please click here. 

The End of an Era…For Real This Time

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Breda 4052
I’ve spilled quite a bit of digital ink writing about the retirement of the WMATA 1000 Series and 4000 Series railcars.  Yesterday, car 4014 was trucked from WMATA’s Greenbelt Yard to a scrapyard in Baltimore.  This car was the last of the 4000 Series cars to be removed from WMATA property, truly making the end of the retirement process.  While it is possible that the 8000 Series cars (which are just modified 1000 Series cars) that were used for revenue collection are still on the property, these are scheduled to be scrapped as well and replaced by 6000 Series trains that have been refitted for use on the money train.  All that are left from these two car classes are the 1000-1001 and 4000-4001 pairs, which are being retained for historical purposes.

As I have written before, as someone who grew up in the DC area and has always considered the 1000 Series trains to be my favorites, this is a significant moment in the region’s transportation history.  Once the 1000s were relegated to the middle of train consists after the Fort Totten crash, only when a 4000 Series car was at the head end of a train did it feel like I was on the Metrorail that I grew up with, complete with yellow and orange interior colors and the buzzing of the DC motors on the Breda cars.  Those days have been over since July, and are truly over as of yesterday.

Photo caption:  Breda 4052 (left) and Rohr 1124 at Gallery Place. As of yesterday, all of the 1000 Series and 4000 Series railcars have been removed from WMATA property to be scrapped. Photo taken February 16, 2004.

Bus Photo of the Month: February 2018

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New Flyer XN40 2959

New Flyer XN40 2959

Location: Columbia Pike at Joyce Street, Arlington, VA
Operator of Vehicle: Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Date of Photo: July 4, 2017

When compressed natural gas (CNG) buses made their entry in to US transit fleets, the buses were notable for the large hump on their tops.  This hump was for the fuel tanks.  Many agencies highlighted the fact these buses were running on compressed natural gas as opposed to diesel, and some even used special paint schemes on these buses to draw attention to that fact.  This included WMATA’s first CNG buses, the New Flyer C40LF buses ordered in 2002.  However, the fuel tanks on these must be replaced after 15 years, often resulting in the bus being retired at that time.  As bus designs have evolved, the fuel tanks have been incorporated in to the bus design in less obvious ways and agencies have moved away from highlighting their CNG vehicles.  As a result, there is little indication to most passengers boarding one of these newer buses that they are boarding a bus powered by CNG.  As someone who enjoys seeing variety in bus fleets, I am sorry to see the special liveries for alternative fuel vehicles such as hybrid and CNG buses.  That said, it is remarkable to see how new CNG buses, such as this New Flyer XN40 that replaced WMATA’s original C40LF buses, now look so much like their diesel counterparts.  Do you like when alternative fuel vehicles get special paint schemes?  Post your thoughts in the comments below!

For more photos of WMATA’s New Flyer XN40 buses, please click here. 

Bus Photo of the Month: December 2017

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Flxible Metro-B 9436

Flxible Metro-B 9436

Location: F Street, NW at 15th Street, NW, Washington, DC
Operator of Vehicle: Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Date of Photo: July 4, 2005

The Rail Photo of the Month post for this month and a conversation I had earlier this week with a fellow transit fan inspired me to pick this photo to be the December 2017 Bus Photo of the Month.  Yesterday’s photo featured a Budd car from Miami that is nearing the end of its service life on account of its replacement having just entered revenue service.  Today’s photo features the first type of Metrobus that I recognized as being “different” (in other words, new) as a budding transit fan in the early 1990s.  At that age, I had no idea what a Flxible was, what a Metro-B was, or that these buses would push out some older bus that I either wasn’t familiar with or didn’t have an attachment to.  However, I did notice these buses had larger destination signs, that they “flipped” horizontally instead of vertically, that the interior speakers had a different shape, and a few other differences that most commuters would pass off as being subtle.  As I’ve grown older and as time has marched on, there are now quite a few buses in the DC area that I can recall being new that I have seen entirely retired.  One of the great joys I have in running this website is that I am able to document my transit fan experience for the ages so that others can see the equipment, paint schemes, and more that are no longer with us but remain as memories perpetually.

For more photos of WMATA’s Flxible Metro-Bs, please click here. The De