U.S.N.O. Time

VRE's trains run not by the time it says on your watch, but by the time that the U.S. Naval Observatory Time Services Department says it is.

VRE's trains run not by the time it says on your watch, but by the time that the U.S. Naval Observatory Time Services Department says it is.

Why are we telling you this?

Because we've been finding that many people miss their trains because their watches are set a few minutes behind the “real railroad time”. Not all watches or cell phones, or even our validation stamps for our ticket machines are properly synchronized to this time, but the watches our conductors and engineers use are and since our train crews synch up with the Naval Observatory clock before each and every run, anyone with a slow watch has a good chance of missing the train. We can't board people once the signal has been given for the train to leave the station, so it's very important that everyone is running by the same time clock.

Getting yourself tuned on the same time is thankfully very easy: you can call the Observatory's voice announcer at 202-762-1401, or you can visit their Web site at http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/simpletime.html to get the exact time, down to the second.