Orange to Vienna is OK except that all that you get to see mostly is a highway.
Exactly what one sees too from the Silver Line, which runs interlined with the Orange Line, and then in the median of the Dulles Airport Access Road from East Falls Church onward.
My favorite is the Blue line to Franconia because you get to essentially follow the RF&P (CSX) all the way from a little past Reagan National Airport to Franconia. You can clearly see the famous AF interlocking where NS splits off from CSX. You can see the CSX flyover across the NS line and Camerons Run, and then pass by Van Dorn interlocking (near Van Dorn station), onto Franconia, which is also a VRE stop, and Franconia interlocking on CSX. And incidentally if you take the Yellow from Gallery Place to King St. you cross the river next to the Long Bridge used by CSX and Amtrak, instead of in a dark tunnel under Foggy Bottom too
I don't know if there is enough time to do this, but a possiblity is Union Station - (Red Line) - Gallery Place - (Yellow Line) - King St - (Blue Line) Franconia - (Blue Line) - Rosslyn - (Silver Line) - Weile Reston
There isn't enough time. The intentions are to get to Tysons Corner around lunchtime, and to do so with such a circuitous route would mean a much earlier morning start. In addition, as I said there may be time limit to how long one can remain within the paid area of the system, and to do all that would also require us physically exiting and re-entering the faregates at some point. I'd like to avoid the possibility of a station agent having to manually release potentially 17 of us from the system if our cards don't work.
Something to think about from a railroad/Amtrak angle. But of course anything else is fine too.
I was shooting for something a little different (hence the Southeastern Green Line), avoiding the Amtrak angle only because it's something most of us are already familiar with. Remember many of us have already aced the Metro system together, and I know some haven't. In this case being Winter and with short daylight the possibilities are limited. With that said, many will be in town parts of Friday and Monday, so I am sure the opportunity can arise to do one or more of those lines suggested.
Edited by KevinKorell, 06 January 2015 - 01:30 AM.
corrected grammar