Here are the answers to whichWMATA week 93

On Tuesday, we featured the ninety-third challenge to see how well you knew the Metro system. Here are the answers. How’d you do?

This week, we got 37 guesses. Nine of you got all five. Great work, ERD, Alex B, Peter K, Stephen C, J-Train-21, Solomon, AlexC, dpod, and JamesDCane!

All of the stations featured this week have one thing in common: They’re all served by the Blue, Orange, and Silver Lines on the common segment between Rosslyn and Stadium/Armory.

The first image shows the outbound end of the lower level at Rosslyn. The “welcome to Virginia” sign is distinctive because it’s the only one of its kind in the system.

An additional clue is the wall to the left. Because it’s a flat wall instead of a coffered wall, you can see this is a split level station rather than a side-platform station.

All 37 of you got it right.

The second image was taken looking up from the Independence Avenue entrance to Smithsonian station. There are two signs partially visible. The upper sign “…ture” is attached to the Department of Agriculture, which is located next to this station.

The lower sign is also a clue, though one that misled some of you. The “Ca…” isn’t the first part of “Capitol South”, but rather “Carmen Turner”, to whom Smithsonian station is dedicated. Carmen Turner was the general manager at WMATA from 1983-1990 and became Undersecretary at the Smithsonian Institution after leaving the transit agency.

30 figured it out.

The third image shows a portion of the nameplate at Eastern Market, visible through the train windows. Eastern Market is the only station on the Blue Line to start with the fifth letter of the alphabet.

31 knew the right answer.

The fourth image shows the mezzanine at Foggy Bottom. The main clue here is the solitary escalator at center. This is the only place in the system where a single escalator drops down through a hole in the mezzanine unaccompanied by stairs or an elevator.

We featured it from a different angle in week 30. 21 of you remembered.

The final image shows Potomac Avenue. Solving this clue took a little base knowledge of the system.

The waffle-style vault narrows it down to 32 stations, and eliminating side, split-level, and cross-vault stations narrows this to 17.

The definitive clue was the presence of a single escalator next to an elevator on a T-shaped mezzanine. Virtually all of Metro’s early island platform waffle stations have a mezzanine with side-by-side escalators at one end, and an elevator at the other end.

Potomac Avenue is unique in having a third escalator next to the elevator. Waterfront has a similar design, except it has a staircase next to the elevator rather than an escalator. And at Federal Triangle, the third escalator is alone, with the elevator descending through the center of the mezzanine.

Finally, the shape of the mezzanine is fairly distinctive. Most mezzanines are golf club-shaped or hatchet-shaped, when the entry is through the side of the vault or spatula-shaped, when the entry is from the station’s end wall.

Potomac Avenue is T-shaped because it has long sections on either side of the entry, rather than just on one side, like with a golf club-shaped mezzanine.

12 of you put the clues together.

Thanks for playing. Great work! We’ll be back in two weeks with another quiz.

Information about contest rules, submission guidelines, and a leaderboard is available at http://ggwash.org/whichwmata.