BRAINTREE, Mass. — A Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority rapid-transit trainset rolled out of a storage yard and onto station tracks after an operator lost control, disrupting Monday morning Red Line rush hour operations, the Boston Globe reports.
The incident at the Braintree station occurred about 5:30 a.m. and led to delays of up to 30 minutes before normal service was restored about 9:20 a.m. An MBTA spokesman said the “unintentional” move involved a two-car trainset with “diminished braking capacity.” The agency is investigating, he said.
The incident, the latest in a series of MBTA operating issues, comes a month after the Federal Transit Administration issued a directive requiring the agency to establish new procedures for moving trains with mechanical problems, citing runaway issues at MBTA railyards [see “Federal directives order MBTA to address safety issues,” Trains News Wire, June 15, 2022]. That was just one of four directives from the FTA.
Did the operator start the train before the air pressure had built up in the reservoirs? Only reason I can see for this. I am presuming these cars are NOT like older PCC type cars which have spring applied stopping brakes and dynamic braking.
If I correctly read your inference, do you mean to think these are trolleys? That would be the Green Line. No, the Red Line is a full subway. Red Line cars were in olden days considered the largest subway cars in America (maybe newer systems like BART or WMATA have caught up). Orange and Blue Lines are also full subway mode but not as long or wide as Red Line cars.
As far as I know, Orange and Blue Line cars are the same width and length, but they aren’t the same cars. Because the Blue Line cars are dual mode (operates off third rail downtown to Logan Airport, and OH wire east from the airport), each line’s cars are unique and captive to its color.
According to Seashore Trolley Museum, the BERy Cambridge-Dorchester line cars are 69′ 3″ long and were the largest until 1962. They were 9′ 6″ feet wide also. This is now called the Red Line.
The Main Line Elevated (Orange Line) and East Boston Tunnel Line (Blue Line) cars were similar in size to each other but the East Boston Tunnel was a streetcar tunnel converted to rapid transit, so the cars are smaller. The 1958 Main Line cars are 55′ long and 9′ 8″ wide, with curved sides. The 1951 East Boston Tunnel cars are 48′ long and 8′ 6″ wide, respecting the old streetcar tunnel.
Here’s Seashore’s page on their preserved Boston Rapid Transit cars. https://collections.trolleymuseum.org/search/results?car_number=&collection=3&type=3&sortby=year-built
Thanks for information more detailed than my own (and more correct). I knew that the R/W east of the airport was an old trolley line Boston Revere Beach and Lynn, or something like that), but I didn’t realize that the tunnel to Boston was restricted to trolley-size cars.
New York also has different loading gauges, IRT smaller, BMT and IND larger and I believe the same.
As a one-time Quincy resident with family in the Quincy – Braintree- Weymouth area ever since, I’m going to be very crabby about this one. Regardless of how obsolete and/or hopeless the other subway lines (Green, Orange, Blue), the Red Line is supposed to function, it’s supposed to be the world-class star of the show. I have to ask, what the {whatever} is going on with MBTA if now even the Red Line is collapsing?
I have to point fingers at the state legislature. The legislature has stars in its eyes — commuter rail extension to the Massachusetts South Coast, commuter rail electrification for reasons unknown ….. while the core subway system is rapidly falling apart.