Trainspotting with NPI: Watch pre-revenue service light rail trains glide through Bellevue

Last week, Sound Tran­sit revealed that ser­vice between eight sta­tions mak­ing up the major­i­ty of the East Link / Line 2 exten­sion would open to the pub­lic on April 27th. To cel­e­brate that announce­ment, we’ve got anoth­er install­ment of Trainspot­ting with NPI for you. Our last install­ment showed trains in action in the City of Red­mond. This install­ment, on the oth­er hand, has a Bellevue-theme.

With a pop­u­la­tion of 151,854, Belle­vue (French for beau­ti­ful view) is King Coun­ty’s sec­ond-largest city. It is locat­ed almost direct­ly across Lake Wash­ing­ton from Seat­tle’s down­town core and adjoin­ing neigh­bor­hoods. PACCAR, T‑Mobile, and Valve call Belle­vue home, and major tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies like Microsoft and Ama­zon also have a pres­ence there. Sound Tran­sit cur­rent­ly serves Belle­vue only with ST Express bus ser­vice, but that will change when Line 2 opens!

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

I: Follow a train as it rolls into Wilburton Station

In this clip, you can get a bird’s eye view of a train rolling east­bound into Wilbur­ton from Belle­vue Down­town on ele­vat­ed tracks. You’ll see the train cross over sev­er­al pri­vate park­ing lots and 116th Avenue.

II: A train at Wilburton Station

Now for a pho­to. Here you can see a train mak­ing a sim­u­lat­ed stop at Wilbur­ton Sta­tion. This is the sta­tion clos­est to Over­lake and KP’s main Belle­vue campus.

III: A train leaves South Bellevue Station and heads into the trench paralleling Bellevue Way and 112th Avenue SE

In this clip, you can see a train leav­ing the South Belle­vue Sta­tion and head­ing towards down­town Belle­vue through a trench adja­cent to the Mer­cer Slough. The his­toric Win­ters House is vis­i­ble on the east side of the trench.

IV: A train at South Bellevue Station

South Belle­vue is one of just a few 2 Line Sta­tions with a big park­ing garage. It is locat­ed near the con­flu­ence of Inter­state 90 and Inter­state 405.

On April 27th, the fol­low­ing Red­mond to Belle­vue sta­tions will open to riders:

• Red­mond Technology
• Over­lake Village
• Bel-Red
• Spring Dis­trict
• Wilbur­ton
• Belle­vue Downtown
• East Main
• South Belle­vue

The lat­ter six are the Belle­vue stations.

The Belle­vue to Seat­tle seg­ment (which includes Mer­cer Island) will not open this year, because con­trac­tors need more time to fix defec­tive con­struc­tion on the Homer M. Hadley Memo­r­i­al Bridge. Even­tu­al­ly, though, the Mer­cer Island and Jud­kins Park Sta­tions will open too, and Link will start car­ry­ing pas­sen­gers across Lake Wash­ing­ton. Sound Tran­sit has an oper­a­tions and main­te­nance facil­i­ty (train yard) in Belle­vue, so it can pro­vide ser­vice on the rest of the line in the meantime.