The newest Red and Orange Line trains will remain out of service for the foreseeable future as workers examine them “with a fine-toothed comb” to determine if the vehicles made by Chinese rail manufacturer CRRC played a role in a March 16 derailment, MBTA Deputy General Manager Jeff Gonneville said Monday.
In the two weeks since the incident, investigators have not determined the cause of the low-speed Orange Line derailment at Wellington Station, which damaged a track switch.
Shuttle buses are replacing subway service between Oak Grove and Sullivan Square station through April 11 to allow for repairs and maintenance at other stations.
Without getting into detail, Gonneville told the Fiscal and Management Control Board that the train that derailed was “one of our higher-mileage CRRC cars.”
Workers are disassembling components of the vehicle and shipping them out for additional analysis.
“Until we get the conclusion of this, we are going to hold all of the CRRC cars out of revenue service until we get to that point where we truly can identify and say comfortably that every piece of this vehicle is functioning the way it was designed to function,” Gonneville said.
The incident occurred one day after the MBTA started a diversion at Wellington crossing both inbound and outbound trains through a single-track stretch to allow for work on the other track, a strategy Gonneville described as “relatively new” for the T.
The switch affected by the derailment was about 46 years old, Gonneville said, and will now be replaced.
FMCB Chair Joseph Aiello said the switch may offer lessons the T can apply to the rest of the system, cautioning that “we still have a lot of old stuff on the system, and even when well-maintained, they run out of juice sometimes.”
The T had four new Orange Line trains and one new Red Line train, each including six cars, in passenger service before the derailment.
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