Trainspotting with NPI: Light rail vehicles roll into Redmond for daytime Line 2 testing

After more than a decade of plan­ning, project design, and align­ment con­struc­tion, Sound Tran­sit is at last on the verge of bring­ing high capac­i­ty tran­sit ser­vice to Belle­vue and Red­mond, two of Seat­tle’s largest sub­urbs. With all of the sta­tions built and the tracks in place, the agency has recent­ly moved into the test­ing phase on the east­ern seg­ments of its forth­com­ing Line 2 light rail line.

The agency start­ed with night­time test­ing last year. Now test­ing is occur­ring dur­ing the day­time, which is excit­ing, because it’s a lot eas­i­er to see the trains.

Ear­li­er this week, NPI cap­tured a test train rolling through Belle­vue. Today, Sound Tran­sit crews brought two trains east to the Line 2 ter­mi­nus in Red­mond for more tests. Our cam­eras were there to cap­ture the action, and we’re delight­ed to be able to share our favorite pho­tos and videos with Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate readers.

Let’s get to the pic­tures and clips. Note that none of the videos have any sound.

I: Two trains make their way to RTS via Overlake Village

For today’s test, Sound Tran­sit staff decid­ed to send out not one, but two trains. In the clip below, you can see both of them head­ing east in tan­dem towards the Over­lake Vil­lage Sta­tion. One is a Kin­ki Sharyo-made LRV from the first-gen­er­a­tion Sound Tran­sit fleet; the oth­er is a Siemens-made sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion LRV.

II: The trains cross over NE 148th Avenue

In this clip, you can see the trains pass over NE 148th Avenue at State Route 520 and pre­pare to enter Over­lake Vil­lage Station.

III. A train moves so workers can check the track

In this clip, you can see a test train slow­ly mov­ing towards RTS, then crews step for­ward to inspect the track where the train was.

IV: Traffic rolls by a parked bus and the two LRVs

In this clip, you can see the two trains parked on either side of the plat­form at the Red­mond Tech­nol­o­gy Sta­tion, with an ST Express bus on the adja­cent ramp.

V. Zooming over the Redmond Technology Platform

In this clip, you can see the trains at the Red­mond Tech­nol­o­gy Sta­tion from anoth­er angle. RTS uses a cen­ter plat­form con­fig­u­ra­tion rather than plat­forms on either side. Rid­ers can exit at ground lev­el or by going up and over the tracks.

VI. Workers check out the tracks near RTS

In this clip, you can see the Siemens LRV they picked for test­ing parked under­neath the new pedes­tri­an walk­way Microsoft built across State Route 520 to bet­ter con­nect its Red­mond cam­pus while work­ers check out the tracks.

Sound Transit’s East Link / Line 2 is ten­ta­tive­ly slat­ed to open in mid-2024, bring­ing ser­vice to eight new sta­tions locat­ed in Belle­vue and Redmond.

After issues with the cross-lake sec­tion of the align­ment are fixed, Line 2 ser­vice will be extend­ed to and from Seat­tle via Mer­cer Island with two more stations.