WASHINGTON — The National Transportation Safety Board has issued a safety alert, asking commuter rail and rail transit systems to check wheelsets for possible out-of-gage situations.
Safety Alert 083, issued Wednesday, results from an October derailment on the DC Metrorail system, which revealed problems in which some wheels moved outward from their mounted position on axles. That problem on Metrorail’s Kawasaki-built 7000-series railcars led to those cars being removed from service, which left Metrorail with insufficient equipment to operate a regular schedule [see “DC Metrorail service to be limited …,” Trains News Wire, Oct. 18, 2021]. The reduced operations will continue through at least the rest of 2021.
The safety alert says an out-of-specification wheelset “is not easily identifiable with a routine visual inspection,” and therefore could exist elsewhere. It could lead to a “catastrophic” derailment, the NTSB says.
“As we continue to conduct the investigation of this derailment, it is imperative that the safety issues identified are addressed immediately to protect the American public traveling daily on our transit system,” Robert Hall, director of the NTSB Office of Railroad, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Investigations, said in a press release.
Preliminary report details events leading to Metrorail derailment
The NTSB has also issued its preliminary report on the Oct. 12 Metrorail derailment near the Arlington Cemetery station that spurred the safety alert. That report details that one wheelset on car 7200, which derailed between the Rosslyn and Arlington Cemetery stations, had derailed twice in less than 90 minutes prior to the accident at 4:51 p.m. that halted the train and led to the evacuation of passengers. The first incident occurred at 3:23 p.m. near the Arlington Cemetery station; the next at 4:13 p.m. near the Largo Town Center station at the end of the Blue and Silver lines. The investigation also found outward movements by both wheels on one axle of car 7200 had increased the gage of the wheelset by 2 inches.
Preliminary reports do not reach conclusions, but spell out the circumstances under which the accident occurred.
Did the train car magically re-rail itself? Something missing in the story here. And once this all started, were passengers removed from the train? Were there passengers on board the second time it derailed?
Who mfg wheel sets? New supplier?