Introduction: June 20th's activities began at 8:00 am with an exciting and informative tour of Metrolink's shops followed by a chartered excursion. Metrolink is the light-rail system for the St. Louis area. Our host for the tour was Mr. William E. Vance, Manager of Training for Metrolink organizations.

Background on Metrolink: Metrolink is eight years old and is run by a joint government (Illinois & Missouri) agency known as the Bi-state Development Agency (http://www.bi-state.org). It stretches from Lambert International Airport in the west to Belleville, IL in the east.

Highlights of the tour: The tour began at their shop facilities, with the group splitting into three smaller ones. Each group then got a tour of the Control Center, which includes communications & security for the bus and rail system, and the shop area. The control center was particularly interesting watching security cameras and listening to dispatch calls from throughout the system. The shop area tour gave us an overview of maintenance operations, maintenance challenges of the three shift operation and background on the cars. Then we all loaded into two cars for an hour and a half charter trip east over the new line to Belleville. The line east of 5th & Missouri, about 17 miles, has only been open for about one month and already new parking lots are being built.

Facts about Metrolink:

• Much of the line in Missouri is built on the tracks of the former Wabash.
• Much of the line in Illinois is built on the tracks of the former Louisville & Nashville.
• Metrolink is 8 years old.
• The cars are almost all identical and cost about $3.2M a piece or about $7M including spares for one articulated car. They are built by Siemens.
• The system has 28 stations, 103 surveillance cameras.
• System operates 18 million train miles a year with 15 million riders.
• Metrolink has about 260 employees.
• Cars undergo maintenance about every 15,000 miles , which works out to about 15 days.
• All cars have two deadman switches, cab signals, and train separation controls.
• Maximum speed is 55 mph.

Photo section:

** All images by NRHS Webmaster