(The original monorail Congressional train. It is very cool, and sits in the underground junction of the Senate Russell office Building corridors, which used to the tunnel in which the train operated).

It is Good Friday, and Easter is coming on. I wonder about what sort of basket my grandson is going to get, and if he will see the Bunny. There were a couple babes-in-arms at The Front Page, and talking to their Moms made me quite emotional about my young man so far away. It was a great evening, with Jon-without, Keith and Liz-with-an-S joining Thomas and the other regulars who have grudgingly decided that we might be OK.

Someone asked if I was gong to Church on Sunday, and the question kind of caught me up short. “I am between Churches at the moment,” I said, and we moved on to other topics. I find it kind of curious to speak about religion in public these days. Our family was never part of the mainstream- we wound up in the Unitarian congregation in the town where we grew up, and never did find another one until the kids came along and we wanted to ensure that they were exposed to the traditions that were the basis for Western Civilization.

By turns, we were non-denominational (military), Presbyterian, Lutheran and Episcopal, with even a swing past a relatively liberal Baptist Congregation that had great music and which the kids called “The International Church of Donuts” due to the juice and pastries in the Fellowship Hall afterwards.

But as I said, the farm is surrounded by a much sterner group of Baptists, and I am between churches. I thought about going to the Episcopal church downtown where the Cavalier of the Confederacy, flamboyant General J.E.B. Stuart went, the winter he stayed with us, but maybe I will try it on a Sunday not so fraught with emotion. Which led, naturally enough, after another V&T, to a mention of the precautions we are taking about that Religion We Are Not Supposed To Blame or Even Suggest Is At War With Us.

“Well, I for one am staying away from crowds. All crowds,” I said firmly, putting my glass down a little harder than I had intended. “The ass-hats were trying to make a dirty bomb in Belgium and blow it up to spread radioactive material all over.”

“Glad they didn’t get far,” said Liz-S. “That is an alarming prospect.”

“I have a hard time staying away from the Metro,” said Jon-without. “It really is the only efficient way to get to my office on Connecticut Avenue downtown.”

“ISIS may be having problems in Syria and Iraq, but I am not taking mass public transportation again any time soon. I have been leery of it since the Madrid bombings in 2004, and the London attacks, and the one this week in Brussels just makes my skin crawl.”
“I know what you mean, and I wish I had that option,” said Jon. “The only alternative is to Uber everywhere.”

“I hate Uber,” I said. “But I know some people who do have an option,” I said. “The Congress of the United States. They have the coolest subway system ever, and I got to ride it again the day we were on the Hill this week. It is so cool. And totally safe.”

I love the trains. It was my favorite thing to do when I worked up there, and when we got to take it the other day I was awash in memories, almost all the way back to the time of the International Church of Donuts.

Two subway lines serve three Senate Office Buildings and have a long history. The members are busy people, and with the dispersal of the offices to larger quarters, the trek to the House and Senate chambers to vote was becoming onerous. The idea that they should carve out tunnels below Capitol Hill and construct their own railroad was a logical option.

Starting in 1909, the Senate Office Buildings were serviced by an electric bus. That was replaced in a few years later by a monorail vehicle that featured a wicker coach. In 1960, the back-to-the-future monorail was replaced by a brace of trolleys, one of which remains today and runs between the Senate side and the Russell Senate Office Building. That is this one:

The trolleys installed in 1960 still run on the shortest line that runs from the Senate side to the Russell Senate Office Building. There are two trains and each runs on a dedicated track to make things as simple as possible and protect their riders. They are manually operated by human conductors and are powered by a catenary wire. The cars themselves are open with no sides or roof. Because of the overhead power lines and the manual conductor, the tracks are not separated from the adjacent pedestrian walkway by any significant barriers. These two tracks run on the north side of the tunnel.

Along the south side of the same tunnel that serves the Russell Senate Office Building, a new subway serving the remaining two buildings, Dirksen and Hart, runs parallel until the tunnel splits shortly before Russell. A pedestrian walkway runs down the middle of the tunnel until the split. The subway to Dirksen and Hart was installed in 1993, replacing the system installed in 1960. Marks along the roof of the tunnel show where the catenary wire ran, and you can see them if you look to see the ghosts of history.

The big deal when I was working there and considered taking a private railway that ran only a couple blocks was the arrival of the new trains. They were state-of-the-art, twenty odd years ago: fully enclosed, and each train consists of three cars – one of which is reserved for Senators on business of State. What was new then was that the new cars are fully automated and driverless and operate using Automatic Vehicle Operation (AVO) control and a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) System.

That is the same sort of thing you see all over nowadays, mostly to get from one concourse to another at airports, but back then the automated voice and the strange whooshing sounds it made was pretty far out. And then it occurred to me that the fact that the private railway now relies on the very system those Iranian hackers were exploiting to open a New York reservoir’s floodgates. It turns out the for the last few years, an Iranian team has been conducting what they call “Operation Cleaver.”

The attackers used publicly available attack tools and exploits, as well as specialized malware programs they created themselves. One of the target sets- you can guess the rest of them- were private companies that build SCADA systems like the ones that operate the automated trains. I can only imagine a room full of young men in Tehran hijacking the Senate train, and careening a carload of screaming Senators into the end of the track.

Maybe that would be OK. I don’t know.

But it is something I will consider when I go out to Dulles to fly anywhere, but I also made a note to only take the train on Capitol Hill, and even then, take the one with the nice guy driving it back and forth, back and forth, endlessly, looking at the faces of the great and the near great, and hearing them whisper among themselves.

That is the job I always wanted.

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com