Ken Schmedding was in the last car of train 152 Tuesday evening when it suddenly went dark. The power outage was momentary. But when the lights came back on, passengers could see smoke pouring in.
“People were beginning to look like they were going to panic,” he said.
It was rush hour on the Red Line. A train had struck a metal panel that fell off another train and was dragging it through the tunnel outside Forest Glen station. The panel brushed against the electrified third rail, causing the smoke. Some passengers thought the train had derailed, and Metro crews initially suspected it may have come off the tracks too.
Metro spokeswoman Sherri Ly said Wednesday the train struck an equipment panel cover that came off another train. An investigation into what caused the panel to come off is ongoing, she said.
Closer to the front of the train, Bianca Santos, 26 and Andrew Diroll-Black, 40, were alarmed by a sudden jolt. They heard grinding that lasted about 30 seconds and saw sparks that left black stains on the windows.
“There was a bumping, grinding sound from the front right side of the car — it just sounded like we hit something, just a heavy clunk,” said Diroll-Black, “like when you’re in the car and hit a branch.”
“It was probably at least 25 seconds of crunching, grinding, rattling,” said rider Dave Fontaine, 38, of Forest Glen. He said passengers could feel the shaking under their feet as they flashed looks in each other’s direction, like “what the hell is going on?”
Then a sudden “bang!” as passengers saw a succession of blue flashes coming from the right.
“And then it was the two big booms,” Fontaine said. “It was a flash bright enough that everybody did one of those numbers where you put your hands over your eyes.”
“Everybody sort of cleared a little bit from that corner,” Santos said.
Santos, in the middle of the train, was relieved to see the lights approaching Forest Glen station.
“You could start to see the station, like ‘Oh, thank God,’ ” she said. “And then we get there and the doors — we get to the stop and the doors don’t open.”
“Our car was straddling the station and the tunnel,” said Diroll-Black, who was in the same area of train.
Passengers tried to open the front door to no avail. When that didn’t work, another passenger rigged the car’s left middle door to open, he said. Passengers squeezed through.
“Because the rest of the train was still in the tunnel somebody in our car started shouting down the train for people to come through the train to exit our door,” he said.
At the back, passengers like Schmedding were scrambling to decide what to do. They pressed the button again to contact the operator but got no answer. They saw passengers in the car in ahead of them herding through the front, so they lined up and followed them to the platform.
“152, there’s smoke on the train,” the operator radioed to rail controllers, according to scanner traffic. “Some of the passengers have opened the emergency doors so they can get out.”
Diroll-Black said it did not appear that anyone was injured — and no injuries were reported — but passengers were nervous.
“There was a woman across from me who was very upset — I was like, ‘Take a deep breath, take a deep breath,’ ” he said.
“And then, of course, there was the kind of hilarious message that came over the intercom, which was: ‘We are holding at the station.’”