Last week, I wrote about my fascinating, in-depth tour of Dulles International Airport, where we got to see all sorts of places inside the airport that are closed to the public. We were shuttled around on a reserved people-mover, one of Dulles’s iconic vehicles. At one point we sat on a bus in between airplanes taxiing to the runway.

I ended last week’s piece at the police building in the base of the control tower, where we got to see the screen bank with feeds of various security cameras. Then we climbed up the control tower (actually, we took an elevator, but there are stairs).

Inside, I spotted a “bomb threat checklist,” the full photo of which I probably shouldn’t share. But here’s the top of it. It lists a series of questions the controller is supposed to ask which appear superficially amusing, like “What does it look like?” But nothing amusing about it. Part of the possible work of an air traffic controller.

We got to chat with the controllers, one of whom had just recently started, and they let us wander around the inside of the tower for about 10 minutes. This is a view the vast majority of folks who travel through the airport will never see.

A couple more:

Cool as anything.

The next stop was the massive maintenance facility for the airport’s railcars. Technically, they’re not railcars—they run on rubber tires—but as far as the average rider can tell, it’s just like a subway system. The tracks extend out to the maintenance building so that cars can be moved in and out. There was a portion of live, electrified track between the facility and the outdoors which we were—obviously—warned not to go near.

But first, the bus ride to the facility. In front of us:

And behind us:

I bet the taxiing pilots wondered what a pace car and a bus were doing on one of the roads leading to the runway!

The facility looks like a suburban office park from outside, but inside it’s massive and looks like a factory. Or, if you’ve ever seen one, a big racecar maintenance shop. Or probably like the buildings where city buses and railcars go for work.

Here are my two favorite shots:

I love the little details, too: the stuff you really don’t see as a guest or customer. I spotted some barrels of chemicals from Japan, with a fully Japanese label. A little office with a bunch of what looked like oxygen tanks in it. These sort of surprisingly ordinary yet completely hidden working spaces. The juxtaposition of dramatic and mundane.

Here’s a screen bank of camera feeds within the rail system. Look at those couple of inkjet-printed notices taped up. The little details, again.

This was on the second floor, with some offices behind an elevated walkway. Here’s part of the walkway we didn’t go down. I felt like I was in a James Bond video game.

All of this stuff that feels larger than life, and that works astonishingly well and safely, relies on regular old people. Seeing it up close like this makes you trust it less, in some ways. But in some ways more.

We ended on a perfect note: pizza in a big room, with a visit from a police dog and the president of the airport (two different individuals).

I was there from morning to nearly 3pm. It was all free too, including the pizza. Air travel is never fun, but I appreciate the work that makes it happen. And now I, and you, have seen a little bit of it up close.

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