This story has been updated.
“I am pleased to be able to announce the restoration of six-minute service on the Orange and Silver lines this week,” Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld said in a statement. “I want to thank the Metro customers who stayed with us despite less frequent service and crowding, and we know there is more work ahead to rebuild rider confidence and make service reliable.”
Metro had initially said six months of rush-hour slowdowns were coming as a result of the fire. The fire involved one of three transformers at the substation, Metro said, but the damage extended to the other equipment. Metro restored two of the three transformers to factory condition — a temporary fix that allows it to restore full service ahead of the initial estimate, the agency said.
Metro said a fire in a power facility near the Stadium-Armory station on Sept. 21 was so severe that all of the facility’s most critical electrical equipment was destroyed. The equipment, located at a Metro Traction Power Substation, was located in the parking lot of RFK Stadium, Metro said.
Following the incident, Metro had to reduce the frequency of trains on the lines by running Orange and Silver lines trains every eight minutes during rush hour, limiting acceleration and reducing the number of trains in the Stadium-Armory area, Metro said. At one point, Orange and Silver lines trains were skipping the Stadium-Armory stop at rush hour entirely.
“Near normal” service resumed at Stadium-Armory in November, with Orange and Silver lines trains serving the station again at rush hour.
“While these actions were necessary to prevent an even more significant disruption in rail service, customers were subjected to more crowded, less frequent trains and frequent “stop-and-go” sluggish rides during rush hours,” Metro said in a statement. “Metro experienced a significant drop in both on-time performance and rider satisfaction in the wake of the incident.”
Metro said the nine-megawatt Stadium-Armory substation converts alternating current (A/C) commercial power to direct current (D/C) power consumed by trains on the third rail. When the substation was destroyed, two smaller substations farther away had to feed power to the Stadium-Armory area, Metro said.
Reducing the number of rush-hour trains — normally 20 per hour, to 15 per hour — was a way of avoiding “overloading the system or disrupting service,” Metro said.
In an interview Wednesday, Metro spokesman Dan Stessel said the advanced fix came after inspectors determined the fire damage was not as extensive as initially thought.
“Originally it was believed that due to the heat and smoke that was in the room, and resulting soot, that the other two transformers that were not directly involved in the fire would not be salvageable,” he said. “It was subsequently determined that they could be saved.”
With two transformers running, the Stadium-Armory substation is now a six-megawatt power station, he said, as opposed to the normal nine. But power being fed from the adjacent Potomac Avenue substation — which was recently bolstered from three to seven megawatts — is making up for the reduced load.
Next, he said, a new three-megawatt transformer will be installed at Stadium-Armory. Two more transformers will be replaced over the coming months, with an anticipated completion date of mid-2016 for the full restoration.
Stessel said riders likely will not notice the upgrade process.
“It’ll be entirely seamless,” he said, adding that the restoration does not require service disruptions.