The story indicates that there were passengers on-noard the train as it was leaving the station; the passenger cars suffered a ‘seperation’ {Decoupled?]. Seems like the D.C. Metro cannot do anything right?
FTA:'…ROCKVILLE, Md. - An equipment malfunction caused a Metro train to separate while passengers were onboard during Monday morning’s commute.
The incident happened near the Twinbrook Station along the Red Line in the Rockville area. WAMU transportation reporter and FOX 5 contributor, Martin Di Caro, said that a coupler between two cars became disengaged while a train was leaving the station. The train pulled away and several cars were left behind…"
WOW! Hopefully no one was injured.[sigh] Seems like the reportage leaves some details to be desired?
Simple come apart at the speed leaving a station, unless the engineer notched it out big time, would not be a big issue from the passenger point of view…a slightly “harder” unexpected stop, nothing more.
It would feel like a low speed impact at most.
As to damage to the cars, I have no clue beyond a power cable and air hose what they have to couple up, so
I could be wrong, but I think their type of coupling couples all the necessary control elements (air, power, attendent call, door opening etc) when the coupling is made between cars without additional human intervention.
I know the WMATA coupling system is not the normal knuckle style coupler that railroads use. That being said, could something have failed in their coupling system that is similar to a broken knuckle in the railroad coupling system?
