Photo by Jess J.

Nothing says “how was your three-day weekend?” quite like some unexpected morning rush hour Red Line delays! An insulator reportedly started smoking at the Tenleytown station this morning and led to significant delays in both directions between the Van Ness and Friendship Heights stations — including several trains which have had to sit on the tracks for several minutes or, in some cases, turn back. Add in to that a sick passenger at Twinbrook, and, well, it wasn’t a very fun commute for Red Liners this morning.

The smoking insulator and sick customer have been checked out at this point, but residual delays remain as everything gets sorted out, which could be an issue for those people making their way into the office late today. Dave Jamieson reports that the rush hour timing was the reason it was taking some riders twice as long as usual to get where they were heading today.

“It’s all residual,” says [Metro spokesman Steven] Taubenkibel. “I live on the Red Line, and trains were off-loading at Van Ness and turning back downtown. Whenever you have a delay like this, you have to manage and balance the line. There are so many trains scheduled for rush hour. You can’t squeeze so many into one area.”

One look at Twitter proves that there were a lot of unhappy campers on the rails this morning, though that didn’t ruin some people’s sense of humor: “WMATA is the circus and we’re all it’s clowns.”