Both the derailment and track defect issues were raised at Thursday’s meeting as Lavin sought to assure board members that safety at Metro is on an upward trajectory. No one was injured in the January derailment outside the Farragut North station, but a new 7000-series train was damaged. Metro officials said outside consultants concluded there was not much that could have been done to identify the rust problem in advance. “The report states that this type of failure would have been undetectable with conventional ultrasonic testing, as it will not pick up a corrosion pit in the base of the rail,” Lavin said. In fact, in most of the cases, Metro inspectors downgraded the severity of the defects.

Source: Washington Post March 08, 2018 23:03 UTC