BOSTON — A failure in a counterpin, a small switch part, led to the derailment of a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Red Line train on March 23, MBTA CEO Phillip Eng told a meeting of the agency’s board on Thursday.
WCVB-TV reports the failure of that small pin allowed a larger pin connecting to a throw rod to fall out of place, causing the switch to fail, Eng said. If the counterpin had been installed from above, rather than below, it would have remained in place, avoiding the problem. The agency is addressing the issue by “requiring all of these pins be inserted and installed from above,” he said. “That allows us redundancy in the design and operation of this switch.”
The derailment occurred at a crossover near the Red Line’s Broadway station; no passengers were on board at the time [see “MBTA Red Line train derails,” Trains News Wire, March 23, 2024]. Eng said the switch involved will be replaced during upcoming trackwork.
A day before than incident, a Blue Line train had lost power near the Wonderland station in Revere. Eng said that during repairs, the MBTA identified 12 splices in the catenary wire in the five-station segment between Orient Heights and the end of the line in Wonderland. “That meant 12 repairs in the past,” he said. “That means potentially 12 locations for point of failure in the future.” The wire will be replaced, he said, possibly as soon as April.
Eng has gotten more done in the time he has been there than many years prior in which the system was allowed to go into a state of disrepair. He knows what he is doing and has good follow through.
Eng sounds like a heads up guy!