(The following article by Lyndsey Layton appeared in the Washington Post.)
WASHINGTON — The section of Blue Line track where a six-car train derailed last month was not designed for everyday use and violated Metro’s standards because it lacked metal rail guards meant to keep cars on the track, Metro’s top safety official said yesterday.
In addition, Metro’s immediate response to the accident was flawed and could have made the situation worse, according to an investigation of the derailment.
When the operator of Train 410 told Metro headquarters his train had jumped the tracks, the train controller suggested that the operator restart the train and try to move it to the next station — a directive that violated Metro rules and could have damaged the train and injured riders, said Fred Goodine, the Metro assistant general manager who oversaw the investigation.
The operator couldn’t restart the train, however, and the 60 passengers were later evacuated by rescue workers; no one was hurt.
Goodine was scheduled to release his written findings today, but Metro Chief Executive Officer Richard A. White postponed release indefinitely. “The CEO has made a judgment there’s additional information we need to complete this investigation,” Metro spokesman Ray Feldmann said. “There are still pieces of the puzzle that are missing.”
Last night, after inquiries about the investigation from The Washington Post, Metro officials decided to brief the board of directors today in a private session.
The Jan. 20 derailment took place about 8:20 p.m., moments after the train left the platform at the Reagan National Airport station, headed toward Crystal City. The train was traveling on a stretch of track that was designed to store cars temporarily but that had been used for daily service since November because a construction project had made the regular inbound track, Track 1, unavailable.
Metro officials didn’t check to see whether the center track was engineered to handle routine traffic — trains running every three minutes — before they pressed it into service, Goodine said.
If the track had been designed for daily use, Metro’s safety standards would have required a rail guard — a metal lip that holds a rail car’s steel wheels in place and prevents them from leaving the track. The track had such a guard only on a short section near a switch.
Metro had used the storage track for regular service without a problem in the past, giving subway managers confidence that they could do so without trouble, Goodine said.
Goodine confirmed that at least one track supervisor noticed heavy wear on the rail of the storage track shortly after daily trains began running and that he told a manager about his concerns by early December. Nothing happened.
“We’re aware those statements were made; we’re finding out why they went unheeded,” Goodine said.
Investigators looked into why Train 410 derailed after trains made thousands of trips along the same track. They found a series of factors that contributed to the derailment.
Earlier in the day, two track inspectors noticed wear on the rail and installed a gauge rod, a piece of metal that acts as a brace, Goodine said. The track wear was within accepted standards and was not bad enough to require rail replacement.
The rod forces the rails closer together, making it more likely that a derailed car would swing further off the track bed than it might otherwise, Goodine said.
Another factor was how the train moved on the track. Just before the derailment, the train passed through a switch and was coming out of a curve on the storage track to rejoin Track 1 when it stopped momentarily because of a problem with automatic train control — a common occurrence on Metro trains.
As the train restarted and lurched onto straight rail, the last car was still on curved track that had been braced, and the jerking motion caused the rear wheels to pop off the track, Goodine said.
The train continued to move, and the derailed last car bashed into the safety railing and sheared off the cover of the electrified third rail. Meanwhile, air gushed from a hose connected to the brakes on the last car, causing the train to stop automatically 620 feet from the point of derailment.
Train controllers in Metro’s downtown headquarters noticed a problem with Train 410 on their electronic monitoring screens and called the operator to ask what was happening, Metro officials have said. As the train operator spoke to a controller, a passenger on the last car used the intercom to tell the operator that the train had derailed.
The operator relayed that information to the controller, who asked him whether he could restart the train and move it into the Crystal City station, Goodine said. Metro rules specifically prohibit a train from being moved after a derailment.
“This concerns me very deeply, and we’re going to have to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible,” Metro board Chairman Jim Graham said yesterday after a reporter told him about the findings. “We all feel that safety is the number one objective of this system.”
Since the derailment, Metro put the construction project on hold and returned daily service on Track 1, avoiding use of the storage track while the investigation was underway.
Goodine said his investigation identified at least 10 other stretches of track in Metro’s 103-mile system, including a center track at the West Falls Church station, that are sometimes used for daily service but were designed to a lesser standard as pocket, or storage, tracks. He said none of them pose the sort of safety risks that his investigation found at the National Airport station.