Recently retired train operator thought of the operator
The speed commands showed the train dropping from 59 mph to 35 mph, then to 28 mph. “His train stopped 12 feet from mine, and you could hear the panic in his voice.”
Mitchell and the other operator, Joseph Graham, were awarded top Metro safety prizes that December. Mitchell heard about the Metro crash last month, the recently retired train operator thought of the operator who was killed when she ran into a stopped train. She must have been horrified,” he told The Examiner. “But I was still closing in on the train, closer than I was accustomed to.
When I came around the corner I could see a reflection of the train’s lights on the wall and the track surface,” he said. “I just wanted them to know the system can let you down.
Too close for comfort,” he said.”
Trains are not supposed to come close to each other. Then I knew something was wrong. But for Mitchell it was a haunting experience.
When Larry P. “This is not supposed to happen. “But they never went to zero.”
.An elaborate system alerts the transit system — and even shuts down trains — when they get too close.
Later, when he trained new train operators, he told them the story as a warning. “I didn’t feel I was in danger because I was slowing down,” he said. As an operator with 12 years of experience, he was working overtime during the evening commute, coming from the Foggy Bottom station toward Rosslyn on the Orange and Blue lines.
“I heard another train operator cut into the conversation, and he told central control he just pushed the emergency brake,” he said. His train stopped 35 feet from the other train. But he didn’t know a train was stopped ahead, waiting for another to clear the station ahead — just like in the deadly June 22 crash.
He was under the Potomac River, traveling 59 mph in automatic mode, with a full train.
