Train had its brakes on

The operator of the Metro train that slammed into a stationary train apparently had activated the emergency brake in a failed effort to stop before the deadly collision, federal officials said Tuesday, as they searched for the cause of Monday’s wreck that killed nine and injured 80.

Debbie Hersman of the National Transportation Safety Board said the emergency brake was depressed, and the steel rails showed evidence that the brakes were engaged. Investigators also said the moving train had been in automatic mode, which means onboard computers should have controlled its speed and stopped it before it got too close to the stationary train.

In addition, Metro sources said, the first two cars of that train were two months overdue for scheduled maintenance of some braking components.

Taken together, experts say, these facts point to several possible scenarios: The operator activated the brake too late; the computers that are supposed to stop a train from getting too close to another train faltered; the train’s brakes failed; or some combination of those. Some passengers on the striking train have said they never felt the train slow down.

A team of NTSB investigators painstakingly searched through the tangled heap of metal on the tracks just north of the Fort Totten Station in northeast Washington. They were examining the trains, track and signals; the actions of the operator and her downtown supervisors; and the computers that control train movement and are supposed to prevent crashes. Investigators will also look at maintenance performed this month on the computerized train control system along the stretch of track where the crash took place.

Officials began to remove the train cars Tuesday and plan to experiment with similar trains to determine approximate speed and stopping distance, Hersman said. The crash, the force of which vaulted the rear train atop the other, occurred on a curve where the speed limit is 59 mph, Hersman said.

Today’s experiment will also try to determine whether the curve, or anything else, obstructed the operator’s view of the stopped train. The operator, Jeanice McMillan, 42, was among those who died in the accident. Investigators will examine her cellphone and text-messaging records, review her work and rest schedule, and analyze blood samples, all standard NTSB procedures.

Investigators are also delving into the automatic train protection system, which is designed to make collisions impossible. Had the system been working correctly, it would have sensed that Train 112 was getting too close to Train 214 and automatically directed the brakes aboard McMillan’s Train 112 to engage.

“I truly believe Metro is a safe system,” Metro General Manager John B. Catoe Jr. said. Catoe said it was too early to know what caused the crash, but he said there was “no evidence” that the operator was using a cellphone or texting at the time of the crash. After a special board meeting Tuesday, he told reporters, “there’s not a letter of evidence” to indicate operator error. And right now, he said, there is also no indication of signal failure.

The six cars that formed Train 112 were among the oldest in Metro’s fleet, purchased between 1974 and 1978 from Rohr Industries for the opening of the subway system. They have been rehabilitated and retrofitted “to keep them in good condition,” Metro Board Chairman Jim Graham said.

But federal investigators consider the cars unsafe because of a tendency during a crash to collapse into one another like a telescope.

The force of the impact sheared the lead car of Train 112, pushing part of it onto the roof of the trailing car of Train 214, and slamming the rest into the body of Train 214. Two-thirds of Train 112’s lead car was crushed, Hersman said.

After a Rohr train telescoped in a 2004 crash, the NTSB recommended that Metro retire the Rohrs or strengthen their frames to prevent collapse. The transit agency refused, saying that the cars made up one-third of the fleet and that Metro could not afford to mothball them before their planned retirement in 2012. The NTSB, which makes safety recommendations but has no enforcement authority, disagreed at the time, calling Metro’s stance “unacceptable.”

Tuesday, Hersman again questioned the safety of the Rohr cars and blamed Metro for failing to act. “We recommended to [Metro] to either retrofit those cars or phase them out of service,” she said. “Those concerns were not addressed.”

The cars still make up more than 25% of Metro’s fleet.

The NTSB also recommended that Metro install data recorders, similar to the black boxes found in airplanes, in all of its rail cars after the 2004 crash. Although the agency installed recorders in some of its newest cars, the Rohr cars did not have them.

Metro officials also did not install crucial software revisions that would have allowed investigators to determine whether the operator had applied the emergency brakes, and the train’s speed during braking, according to a source knowledgeable about the braking systems.

Metro’s automated system is built around electronic relays on the trains and along the tracks that allow onboard computers to control speeds and stop trains from getting too close to one another. Over the last decade, Metro has struggled with troublesome relays. The agency tore out all 20,000 trackside relays in 1999 after discovering that a small portion designed to last 70 years were failing after 25.