East Falls Church Metro Station Finally Reopens After Derailment

The East Falls Church Metro station has reopened Monday after being offline for several days following a train derailment.

The reopening comes mercifully before the first weekday -- even without heavy rider volume on a Sunday, it took one rider 96 minutes to get from DuPont Circle to Reston due to the fact that riders had to take a shuttle from Ballston to McLean and vice versa because the East Falls Church station had been shut down.

The derailment happened at 6:15 a.m. on Friday when two westbound Silver Line train cars derailed as it was passing through a track crossing on approach to East Falls Church station, according to a Metro statement.

Workers used specialized equipment to remove the derailed cars, but soon found that the incident had caused a portion of the track to shift, "resulting in damage to the interlocking tracks and related infrastructure," the statement read.

Metro had to replace 200 feet of running rail, rebuild 150 feet of electrified third rail, replace two track crossings at the interlocking and remove and replace about 200 wooden cross ties holding the track in place.