Deadly Washington DC Metro Train Crash | Plainly Difficult | Short Documentary

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As a railway person, when I heard "the train was not detected by the track circuit" my blood chilled. Everything depends on trains being detected by the signalling system!

Hi John, the Mexico City metro underground is a gold mine of disasters. Also the "Maya Train" built on the jungle became a mega disaster even before it started operating.

I was on this (front train, near the middle of the cars) I was living in DC, going to Catholic University for undergrad & I was 19 years old. I remember this SOOOOO vividly, I was rewriting notes for my Intro to Communication class & suddenly I was thrown into the seat in front of me, my chest hit the head rail & knocked the wind out of me. Guy next to me hit his head hard on the seat & was just out of it. I still have a small cut on my arm Craziest experience of my life

The fact that the train didn’t interact with the signalling system means that even if the train was manually driven the risk of the crash would still be close to unavoidable

I like your content, but you missed some major things from the NTSB report: 1) There were multiple track circuits showing 'floating' behavior in the system where they would not show occupancy 2) The ATP system does not send a speed code if it doesn't detect a train in the block, most of the time they would coast through. That's why the train got stuck. 3) WMATA had a program to monitor for floating tracks, but they maybe checked it once a day. All they were pretty much doing is recording them at that point (literally would detect if a train disappeared for 3 seconds). 4) The track circuit wnedor was notified, but they were claiming it was other work done on the system that was responsible. 5) After the accident, suspect track circuits were tested. For worker safety, you put a shunt strap on the track to trigger an occupancy. They tried putting it at either end, and in the middle, and the problem (no occupancy) still occurred. 6) They removed the track completely, which should mean the signal does not pass through, but it did act like the track was unoccupied. This pointed to the transmitter/receiver units for the track circuits and not the impedance bonds or rail. 7) It was noticed on replacement, that newer track circuit receivers were equipped with ferrite chokes. These are used to absorb high frequency noise. 8) On detailed testing, it was discovered the power supply was putting interference like in the 5MHz range, which was feeding to the receiver and getting through the frequency filter to detect the track circuit signal (which were in the 2000-7000Hz range, like 7 different frequencies that didn't have common harmonics, usual for track circuit design, adjoining circuits leak a little past the impedance bond, but because it's a different frequency it doesn't affect neighboring tracks). 9) The power supply was generating signals at very high frequency that were causing the floating track phenomena. 10) WMATA tolerated floating track circuits which is a wrong-side failure. They couldn't shut the system down, and were getting finger-pointing from their vendors. This is very much a classic chain-of-failure, where problems were tolerated, some ineffectual measures were taken, people dug in their heels instead of looking at the problem, and the closeness of previous incidents was downplayed. I had to verify a software checking solution WMATA made after the accident to verify the track circuits were being monitored in real time, and would force manual operation if anything was out of the ordinary. Putting the chokes on the power and circuit feeds (which are literally .05 parts if that) took care of the problem. Another vendor was replacing the impedance bonds, and was retuning the circuits. Suffice to say, I had to read the NTSB report. I know some people who gave depositions for this, and were on the NTSB investigation side, but it's all from the report. The speed commands are defined by route -and-aspect charts, where the speed you get depends if you're taking a switch, and how many free blocks you have in front of you. WMATA's signals are 2-white meaning follow cab commands, or red for stop. That's not uncommon, the Northeast Corridor in the US uses a flashing green for speeds above 80 which come from the ATC system. The speed commands also take into account civil restrictions (e.g. curves), I've had to adjust them before for noise abatement (and WMATA lowered the max speed from 55 after Ft. Totten)

I remember when that happened. In the immediate aftermath, people were too scared to be in the front car as a result. So if you wanted a seat in rush hour, you would go for that front car.

Cost cutting definitely played a factor. Metro has a long history of cost cutting practices and the first thing to get cut is safety features and testing.

I was on the same line when this happened. A couple weeks prior to this accident, on my commute home the train FLEW through like 4 stations without stopping. Somewhere between Friendship Heights and White Flint, I think. The train barely crawled into Twinbrook and all the lights went out. The conductor then said over the intercom, "Everyone out, we have no brakes." When all the cars were empty and checked, it crawled on and we caught the next one bound for Shady Grove. That's the last time I rode the metro and started commuting.

As someone living in the DC area and who has used the DC Metro system to commute for decades, I greatly appreciate this.

I live in DC, on the edge in Takoma Park, and I drove to work when this happened and traffic was so bad that you couldn’t drive back into DC and no trains were running. My roommate had to walk from his job downtown, which took him almost three hours.

“Raging hard on’s” wait, what😂😂 Caught me completely offguard, but hilarious👍🏼 Thanks John

while i enjoy the content of your videos, my favorite part is "all videos are produced by me, John, in a currently (weathery) corner of southern london uk." i then compare it to the weather here in the adirondacks. it's currently cloudy and very windy, with gusts up to 60mph.

As a daily Metro rider for 20+ years, thank you for this video. WMATA eventually did an emergency shutdown of the ENTIRE Metro system following a deadly tunnel fire in 2016. The city was a terrible mire of traffic that day. The 2009 accident was still on the minds of area residents who generally understood that it was necessary. We basically dealt with it, knowing that the current state of the system was unsustainable and unsafe.

I live in the NoVa area ( Northern Virginia) and remember this. It was horrific. The metro is the lifeline of the DC area, but the whole system needs a major overhaul because of how old it is.

They KNEW?! The same failure had happened before and they didn't fix it? How is that _not criminal_?!

11 people died (or injured) in an early 80s METRO subway crash at the same the 14th Street bridge airliner crash/rescue happened. DC was having the worst snowstorm I'd ever witnessed and we were all just stranded, glued to the tv watching stranded motorist tie together their scarves and jackets trying to rescue those people.

the one thing that must never ever happen in a train control system is a train vanishing. A human dispatcher/controller/Fahrdienstleiter is the most conventional solution as an additional layer to catch stuff like this. But I guess the automated systems meant no human dispatcher was used?

Of course, the real irony of the Washington Metro is that it had an excellent light rail system in the 1950s... and tore it out...

Awesome video as always John! I live in Virginia and remember when this happened. After this accident, Metro would sandwich the older 1000 series cars in between newer models until they were able to be replaced with the newer 7000 series cars. It was not uncommon to see a train come into the station with a set of 5000 in front, 1000 in the middle, & 3000 series cars bringing up the rear. It wasn't until recently that they started using automatic train control again and they recently announced that they're going to lift the speed limits of trains from 55 to 75mph, which is what the system was originally designed for. For the last decade, there has been a lot of work done to upgrade and replace systems on Metro to get it up to modern standards. One underlying issue with Metro has always been funding, it's paid for by Maryland, Virginia, and the Federal Government and the latter has done a great job of making sure it's underfunded. One of the ideas of Metro was for government employees to be able to get into work easily but because of the lack of funding, there were some questionable choices made in its design such as lighter rail design which has issues during very cold and hot days. An interesting side note, my parents took my older sister, who was an infant at the time to the grand opening and rode the line those few stations on opening day.