As Riders Sleep, Special Metro Cleaners Get to Work

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AFTER THE GATES of the Stadium-Armory station's Independence Avenue entrance were locked behind us and we walked past the empty station manager's kiosk, the sights and sounds of Metrorail after hours slowly emerged. The rattle of machinery grew louder as we approached the escalators leading down to the platform.

Usually, when thousands of sports fans pour into the station after events at RFK Stadium, they're greeted by a platform crowded with fellow attendees heading home. But early Wednesday morning last week, well after the last passengers had left the station, Stadium-Armory was mostly empty, but far from silent. The din of activity came from about midway down the platform, where small hoses snaked toward opposite end of the station. The electronic passenger information sign was covered in plastic, as were telephones and a lighted Calvin Klein advertising display. Workers in two cherry pickers armed with high-pressure water hoses were spraying out the hardest-to-get to areas of the station: the waffle-shaped coffers high above the platform.

Dirty water cascaded from the ceiling to the platform and trackbed below, where other workers were busy spraying more accessible surfaces. In all, the group was about 10 workers strong, but since many of them were wearing special breathing masks, there was little casual conversation in the spray zone. The noise of the water and the motors driving the high-pressure machinery drowned out all but the occasional muffled yell.

"It's a whole different world at night," Thomas Morrison, Metro's superintendent of contract maintenance and station enhancement, said as we walked past a cherry picker surrounded with spray. "People don't realize the efforts that go on at night."

While Metro's regular cleaning crews take care of most of the trash and the daily wear and tear from the thousands of riders that make their way through the system's 86 stations, it takes a special team to get rid of the accumulated grime and soot left behind by people and trains. Some of the mess is brake dust generated from decelerating trains. The rest is mostly common airborne dust that gets deposited by tunnel air flow and station ventilation systems.

Morrison said he's not deterred by the giant cleaning task. "I'm obsessive compulsive. When I start a job, I spend the time and do it right," Morrison said, vowing that no surface is missed during a station enhancement, as the special deep cleanings and spruce-up jobs are called. "When we set out to do something, we do it."

But when there's less than five hours at most for overnight maintenance and cleaning, Morrison's job can be a tricky balancing act. He needs to schedule time to get his crews into a station, must coordinate essential elements like work trains to deliver equipment like cherry pickers, has to get the electrified third rail turned off and covered with plastic during power washing and must allot enough time for crews to remove the water from stations before the gates are opened for the morning's first riders.

Morrison's team generally gets to 24 stations a year, meaning that each passenger facility gets a deep cleaning every 3 1/2 years. By the end of this winter, the Metro Center, Farragut North, Gallery Place-Chinatown, Judiciary Square and Eastern Market stations, along with Stadium-Armory, will have undergone a full station enhancement. On the list for a spring cleaning: Federal Center SW, Suitland, Capitol South, Pentagon and Pentagon City.

Because of the nightly time constraints, it takes an average of two months to get through one station. In addition to the washing, crews take on nitty gritty tasks like fixing loose platform tiles, painting bathroom corridors, polishing railings and removing unwanted intruders like chewing gum on platform surfaces and the vegetation that can take root in damp lighting units along side the tracks.

Larger underground stations, like Metro Center or L'Enfant Plaza, are the most complicated to clean, since they have multiple levels and more complicated ceiling structures.

Masonry and concrete surfaces above ground are thoroughly cleaned as well. Although attending to outdoor stations might seem like an easier job to tackle, they're more exposed to the elements, which can cause problems like concrete cracking and corrosion related to salting in the winter.

Two other corrosive elements seen at some stations are vomit and urine left behind by drunken partygoers. The acidic qualities of those two substances can leave long-term stains that require special chemical agents to remove.

Since the cleaning cadre is dispatched during Metro's off hours, their work usually goes undetected by most riders, aside from the eagle-eyed passengers who notice a station getting cleaner during a multi-week enhancement. But there's another telltale sign that the crew's been to a station near you: the presence of wheeled utility boxes where the cherry pickers are sometimes kept.

Morrison said he normally gets few complaints about the station enhancement work. Metro's problematic escalators, however, are a different story. They're not under his jurisdiction. "I stay away from them," he bristled.

Photos by Chris Combs/Express