The National Transportation Safety Board released its findings this afternoon from an investigation into the January derailment of a Green line train near the Mt. Vernon Square/Convention Center stop. The accident, in which the fifth car of a six-car train jumped the rails and hit a wall in the tunnel, injured 20 people and left around 60 passengers stranded in the tunnel for nearly 45 minutes. The Associated Press has the first word on the…

Written by DCist Contributor Rebecca Cooper After much ado—and by that we mean delay — the Old Dominion Brew House at the convention center opened in January, and from the looks of things, the bar and restaurant is still trying to combat the relatively light foot traffic in the area during off hours. With its seemingly countless flat screen TVs and copious “tailgate” specials for weekend football games (the bathrooms even have televisions so you…

Good morning, Washington. For the first time in almost 30 years, the Senate will take up a measure considering D.C. voting rights this afternoon, though as we explained yesterday, today’s action is really just a vote to consider giving us the vote in the House, not the actual vote to give us the vote. Mayor Adrian Fenty, who will take public transportation all day today in honor of Car Free D.C. Day, announced he will…

Via the DCist tipline, we heard there may have been a fire at year-old Mt. Vernon Square-area coffee shop Breakwell’s, on the corner of 9th and M Streets NW. Sure enough, the windows at the front and along the side of the shop have been boarded up, and there is visible fire damage to the exterior of the building. While checking out the extent of the damage, DCist chatted with the proprietors of WIDE…

Anyone wishing to pay their respects to former D.C. First Lady Effi Barry, who died from complications related to leukemia last week, can stop by the Wilson Building today, where her body is lying in repose. Viewing began at 10 a.m. and goes until midnight tonight, and will also occur on Friday morning from 6 a.m. until 9 a.m. If you plan to go late tonight, remember that Metro will be running until 2 a.m….

Today tens of thousands of District children return to school, leaving behind the late-morning starts, extended curfews and breaks at the public swimming pool that summer afforded them. And though the year will proceed as it usually does, they will be part of a school system that has seen drastic changes over the last few months. Now under mayoral control and led by new chancellor Michelle Rhee, the District’s public schools have entered a new…

Samuel Gompers is one of those names you vaguely remember from AP U.S. History, along with The Grange and the Know-Nothings. They fit in somehow, but you don’t exactly remember why. While he may not be on the tips of people’s tongues, he does have a rather large monument on Massachusetts Avenue NW near Mount Vernon Square. Gompers, born in London in 1850, was a major figure in the American labor movement, organizing and…

UPDATE: Thanks to Kiki Schneider for the new photo of the fire in action! Andrew Wiseman is the author of this post An orange Old Town Trolley bus burst into flames today just before 6 p.m. on Rhode Island Avenue, NW between 11th and 12th Streets. Before arriving on the scene, this DCist saw and smelled black smoke from outside the Mt. Vernon Square Metro at about 5:50 p.m. and 9th Street was hazy…

The Examiner reports that renovations are underway at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, the central branch of the D.C. Public Public system. The improvements come after former Mayor Anthony Williams’ proposal to replace the building with a new flagship library two blocks away on the site of the old convention center was first tabled by the D.C. Council and then shelved by the Fenty administration. Improvements to the outdated and long-neglected MLK Library…

Finally. After years of delays, the Old Dominion Brewhouse in the new convention center will be opening this Saturday. The convention center folks announced the opening in a press release, and mentioned food but not beer, which worried us a little — however, a quick call confirmed that they do indeed have a liquor license, avoiding similar trouble at nearby BeBar and Vegetate. We walked by the place the other day and it looked completely…