WASHINGTON — DC Metrorail officials were aware of axle defects in two cars that remained in service after an Oct. 12 derailment, the Washington Post reports, with the cars withdrawn only when the independent agency that reviews Metrorail ordered those cars and all other 7000-series vehicles out of service.
The information was reported at a Tuesday meeting of the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission, the independent agency created by Congress in 2017 to oversee the rail transit system after a series of problems.
The safety commission’s chief executive, David Mayer, said the agency was informed of the problem by Metro for the first time during emergency inspections of the 7000-series cars as a result of the Oct. 12. “This issue was not included in materials provided by [Metro] as part of our recent rail car audit, nor disclosed during our many audit interviews,” Mayer said at the meeting.
A Metro spokesman said the agency has completed its inspection of the 748 cars in the 7000-series fleet. With those cars out of service, as well as others that had previously been sidelined, Metrorail has been limited to a bare-bones schedule that will continue at least through the rest of this week [see “Reduced DC Metrorail service to continue …,” Trains News Wire, Oct. 25, 2021].
