Safety Board Accuses Metro Of Neglect in Jan. Derailment

When Metro workers started noticing problems with the CAF cars, they asked three outside groups to look into the situation. All of the reviews, including one done as much as 15 months before the January accident, alerted the agency to the potential for derailments along that type of curved track and the need to add safeguards, investigators said.

Metro workers warned management about the same issues, but they, too, went unheeded, the NTSB noted.

Metro workers and outside experts also found problems with the rail cars' leveling valves, which keep the cars balanced on the tracks. One industry review panel found that 98 percent of the CAF cars failed a car-leveling check. As early as 2004, a Metro quality-assurance officer warned about the valves and noted that an internal derailment committee found that they contributed to a December 2003 derailment. He sent a memo to the Metro manager for the CAF cars, asking that engineers hold off ordering new rail cars with the same valves. But the Metro manager, who was subsequently promoted to oversee all rail car purchases, rejected that idea as premature, according to NTSB reports.

Metro's newest rail cars, the 6000-Series, have the same leveling valve as the CAF cars. The agency is also preparing design specifications for a series of cars with the valve issue unresolved, federal investigators said.

Metro said it is having CAF overhaul the valves on 5000-Series cars, a process that has been completed on 75 percent of them.

Investigators said they could not determine whether the leveling system was a factor in the Mount Vernon derailment because the valve was too damaged by the accident.

Metro officials said they have addressed the problem of poor internal coordination as part of a reorganization this year. Several departments -- including rail car maintenance, quality assurance and engineering -- that used to have turf battles have since been placed under a single person, the chief mechanical officer.