BREAKING NEWS: Metro Trains Collide Between Takoma, Fort Totten

[WMATAGMOAGH]

1079 confirmed as the lead car on train 112 in a very moving article about being in the first car of that train and the initial rescue effort:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/27/AR2009062702417.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2009062702498

If you have looked at the news a lot, you would've saw the number of the car. I been knew it was 1079.

I only have access to streaming radio and newspapers from here.  Also, while it seemed clear from the photos that 1079 was the lead car, this was the first time a media outlet confirmed that suspicion that I know of.

[WMATAGMOAGH]

Here is the latest:

Investigators: Repair Work Preceded Deadly Metro Crash

By Lena H. Sun and Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 1, 2009 5:06 PM

Five days before last week's deadly Red Line accident, Metro did maintenance on a component of a train control system designed to prevent crashes, and the system's circuitry failed to work properly after the work was complete, investigators said today.

According to the statement issued by the National Transportation Safety Board, a track circuit in the crash area "periodically lost its ability to detect trains after June 17." Today's findings raise questions about how Metro tested equipment and monitored its automated control systems before the June 22 accident.

Last week, federal investigators said they found "anomalies" in the same track circuit in the crash area. They also conducted tests that suggest that the striking train in the accident might not have received information that another was stopped ahead. Nine people, including the train operator, died; 80 were injured.

Metro's rail chief Dave Kubicek said in an interview today that Metro technicians replaced the component, known as a weezy-bond, a device that is about 18 inches square and six inches high that is mounted on the wooden cross ties that secure the rails. The device is part of the track circuit and plays a key role in the protection system designed to detect whether trains are present on the tracks. After the installation, personnel tested the equipment. "Everything tested okay upon installation," he said.

In the five days before the accident, however, the track circuit was not working properly. It sent out "flickering" signals, alternately sending information saying a train occupied that stretch of track, or that stretch of track had no train. Kubicek said the flickering began shortly after the repair work.

The flickering of the track circuit could have been visible by controllers in Metro's downtown Operations Control Center, but only if a controller happened to be looking at something the size of a "button on a BlackBerry" at exactly the right time, Kubicek said.

Metro personnel have been testing all of Metro's nearly 3,000 track circuits. They have inspected more than 65 percent of them and found no other problems, Kubicek said. "It's an anomaly. It's very, very unsual and we are going through the rest of the system. We have not found anything on the other alignments that duplicates what we're seeing here."

Federal investigators have concluded the on-scene phase of the investigation, except for a signals group that is continuing to examine the train control system at the crash scene and at Metro's Operations Control Center.