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The Post's Lena H. Sun followed up this morning on what caused last night's disruption and emergency track work at Mt Vernon Sq 7th St-Convention Center: a train that carried no passengers derailed.
Metro's press release on what happened explains that the train derailed in the pocket track of the Mt. Vernon Sq station at about 6:15 p.m. A pocket track is an area where trains can reverse to head in the opposite direction. All passengers had already been unloaded from the train before it derailed, so luckily no injuries were reported. But Sun's story makes the important point that this was the second time such a derailment occurred at the same station since January 2007, and this rail car, a 5000 Series, was the same kind that was involved in the previous derailment. Metro told the Post that a section of track in the general area of last night's derailment was set to be replaced in coming weeks.
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is there some kind of a translation error here? like, because the trains are built in italy, with metric measurements, versus our tracks, with standard measurements, not lining up?
at least wmata isn't building things for nasa...
Jeebus, there you go bashing NASA again. What have you got against NASA? I mean granted they've sent hundreds of monkeys to their certain death, only to sell the snuff videos to European millionaire perverts. And they're secretly recording this conversation, but really. Quit hating on NASA! Don't hate!
hey, i was exclusively hating on wmata there. i can only hate on one referred-to-by-its-abbreviation organization at a time...i'm only one man!
Standard rail gauge all over the world is 4 ft 8½ inches period, no more no less. This size was the decree from Cesar that all roads of Rome shall be 4ft 8 1/2 inches wide. Standard rail gauge is one of the few standards that is absolute.
rj: sure, that's standard gauge, but some places use narrow or broad gauge rail as their standard. look at the map here, the world is hardly uniform.
Personally, I prefer narrow Gauge to broad Gauge, but, hell, I wasn't aware that she'd put on weight. Time takes it's toll I guess. Wait. What were we talking about again?
So Russia, Spain, India, Ireland and many others aren't part of the world?
Best to check with Wikipedia before making such an absolute statement...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_gauge#Broad_gauge
(The Caeser bit is likely a myth, as well)
The key word is "Standard Gauge"; anything smaller is narrow gage and bigger is board gauge. Metro is Standard Gauge, Standard Gauge is absolute.
The problem (which you didn't create, obviously) is calling things 'standard' when they are not actually standard.. kind of like 'standard temperature and pressure', which has no actual meaning.
What about monorail, then? Hmm? Hmm?
Let's not gauge Metro by the number of derailments in a single day.
While they're at it, over at MVS / 7th Street / Convention Center / The Gates of Hell / This Place Really Needs Another Exit / Etc. / Speed Racer ... would it be so much to ask to clean up all of the yellowed bat doo doo?
I assume it's bat #2...
Hey, collecting and selling this could solve all of WMATA's financial problems!
Go Urban Bat-Shit in your faux barrel suburban planters! 100% D.C. Bat poo!
i was lucky enough to get on the green line train that was directly behind this one. what a mess.
It would be nice if they would also explain why the decided to run 4 straight Green Line trains once they began single-tracking. It took 40 minutes from the time I got to Gallery Place at 6:50 to board a Yellow train.
It was still derailed at 10pm last night. It took 2 hours to get from Crystal City to Greenbelt. Instead of riding the yellow line all the way to Fort Totten and waiting in the cold for a green line train I got off and sat at Mt Vernon and watched the tunnel rats wander around. When I finally got a green train we stopped in the tunnel right next to the derailment and that train was practically laying on it's side up against the wall. I would have loved to sit there and watch them set it upright again. Maybe WMATA can set up webcams so we (and by "we" I mean nerds like me) can watch the crews work.