WASHINGTON — DC Metrorail will return eight trainsets of its 7000-series railcars to service today, a step forward to address an equipment shortage created when the cars were sidelined after an October derailment.
The Washington Post reports the 64 cars are being returned to service under an agreement reached in May, but the return of the entire 748-car fleet is “at least several weeks away.”
The cars returning to operation will initially be used on Metro’s Green and Yellow lines. They will require daily inspections to check for a defect that causes wheels to shift on their axles — the problem which led to the derailment in October. That, in turn, caused all 748 of the Kawasaki-built 7000-series cars, about 60% of the Metrorail fleet, to be removed from service.
A few of the cars were briefly put back in operation last December, but were again withdrawn after the independent Washington Metrorail Safety Commission found Metrorail was not meeting its inspection criteria [see “DC Metrorail 7000-series cars again removed …,” Trains News Wire, Dec. 30, 2021].
WMATA is supposed to be Standard US RR gauge: 4′ 8 1/2″ (1435 mm).
https://cs.trains.com/trn/f/742/t/263587.aspx
Trains says it is 1/4 smaller than standard.
It does seem crazy that they are having this problem with 150 year old technology–it’s not like this is a high tech part of the vehicle.
Does the issue relate back to the rail contour or gauge used on Metro which may be somewhat different from other systems?
Lots of unanswered questions.
Overall, I like the 7000s and they seemed a welcome upgrade from the older cars when they were introduced about 6 years ago.
For the life of me I can’t see why they don’t go after Kawasaki to replace all of the wheel sets? They must still have a problem with the wheels shifting if they have daily inspection. That’s going to eat up a lot of time an man power each day. Who’s paying for all that labor anyway?
This calls to mind. I don’t know how these cars are coupled to each other. One brand of commuter car, some time ago, suffered a separation due to a coupling pin missing. My question that I never got answered was: Are the pins inserted from the top with a “stop = enlarged end” ? Even for safety if a hairpin is installed on the bottom, it would seem gravity would provide failsafe protection. Can that pin “climb” due to buff forces? endmrw06162211:29
It’s not a coupler problem. The problem is, the wheels come loose on the axles and creep out of gauge. It appears WMATA doesn’t know why this is happening.
I have not seen any reporting about Kawasaki having any liability for this defect. Since it affects all 748 cars, it would seenm to be either a design flaw or a manufacturing/quality control flaw. How is it that the manufacturer is not the one doing the repairs?