Metro News Release

For immediate release: September 20, 2005

Metrorail Cars Separate at Silver Spring Station

The first two cars of a six-car Red Line train that was headed downtown separated from the last four cars as it began to pull out of the Silver Spring Metrorail station at 9:07 a.m. today. The train operator was able to reconnect the rail cars of train 170 at 9:17 a.m. The train then pulled back into the Silver Spring Metrorail station and offloaded all passengers at 9:20 a.m. There were no injuries.

The train operator became aware of a problem immediately when the train’s brakes applied automatically as he pulled out of the station. The train had just cleared the station platform when the incident took place. The last four cars of the train were separated by approximately seven feet from the first pair.

The train operator, a six-year-veteran who has worked for Metro since 1989, reported the problem to the Operations Control Center, which also saw the train stopped on its monitors. Simultaneously, a passenger on board called the Metro Transit Police Department to report the problem. The train operator reconnected the cars, and then went to the last car of the train to pull it forward into the Silver Spring station, where the passengers were offloaded. The train was taken to the railyard for inspection.

Metro officials with the safety and rail maintenance offices are trying to determine the cause of the incident. The preliminary investigation is focusing on the "couplers" that connect the railcars. The separation of railcars, known as "decoupling" is a very rare occurrence. The last time railcars separated while trains were carrying customers was on January 28, 2004 at the College Park Metrorail station, after which it was determined that a bad coupler needed to be replaced.

All six cars of train 170 were manufactured by Rohr.

News release issued on September 20, 2005.