Metro Crash Injures 3 Employees
29 November 2009 11:04 AM | By Prince Of Petworth in Transit
Photo by PoPville Flickr user cacophony76
From a WMATA press release:
A six-car train struck the rear of a parked train inside Metrorail’s West Falls Church Rail Yard today (Nov. 29) at 4:27 a.m. Three employees sustained minor, non life-threatening injuries and were taken to a nearby hospital. No customers were on board the trains.
As train number 902 was pulling into the rail yard it struck the last car of a six-car train that was parked in the yard. Two employees were on board the parked train cleaning it to prepare it for service when it was hit. The parked train had no identification number assigned to it because it was not in service. Trains are assigned an identification number when they are about to go into service.
Train number 902 was comprised of rail car numbers 5056, 5057, 1171, 1170, 3223 and 3222. The parked train was comprised of rail car numbers 5138, 5139, 1107, 1106, 3216 and 3217. The lead car (5056) of train 902 made contact with the rear car (3217) of the parked train.
Metro officials are conducting an investigation into the incident to determine why the accident took place.
Follow PoP on twitter
Join the PoPville Flickr pool
29 November 2009 11:57 AM | Dittle Said:
Umm, even though this happened at 4:27 in a rail yard, there have been a lot of Metro accidents lately.
29 November 2009 12:08 PM | Anonymous Said:
ya think?
29 November 2009 12:44 PM | ontarioroader Said:
So what’s WMATA up to so far this year – around 25 deaths and over 100 injured?
29 November 2009 3:00 PM | Anonymous Said:
at this rate we won’t have any rail cars left by the end of the year!
29 November 2009 10:25 PM | West Kansas Said:
Media-fueled hysteria.
A year ago, this incident wouldn’t have been a blip in the news cycle.
29 November 2009 10:35 PM | Jason Said:
This type of thing DOES NOT happen in normal cities. I mean, seriously, Mexico City has a better and safer transit record than DC.
DC is a fire-belching, apocalyptic, demonically possessed clusterfuck of third-world dysfunction. I hate it here.
30 November 2009 7:04 AM | Lee Watkins Said:
The frequency of accidents on DC’s metro is NOT NORMAL. There’s been more accidents in the last year or two than Chicago or NYC have had in the last 100 years. I’ve lost track of how many accidents there have been.
DC needs to put some other city’s employees in charge of Metro. Seriously, just start over with all new employees shipped in. Look, does this happen on Baltmore’s subway line? No, it does not.
That being said, as abnormal as Metro is, technically it’s still way safer than driving a car anywhere.
30 November 2009 9:10 AM | ontarioroader Said:
WMATA just released that this crash will cost over $9 million. Why the hell don’t the feds/NTSB have oversight of this system yet? Why does Catoe still have a job?
30 November 2009 2:55 PM | stickler Said:
‘INJURES 3′ – not ‘INJURIES 3′