Derailment Crunches Red Line Train At Broadway Station
Damage from a September 2021 Red Line derailment at Broadway station (note the chunk of concrete platform attached to the train). Photo by Elisabeth Boyce-Jacino, used with the photographer’s permission.
In an incident at Broadway station on Tuesday morning, an older Red Line train apparently derailed and collided with the station platform, causing serious damage to the train but no reported injuries to passengers.
The incident interrupted Red Line service between downtown Boston and the JFK/UMass station, with delays rippling throughout the rest of the line:
The vehicle that derailed, identified as car number 01745, was manufactured between 1987 and 1989 by UTDC, a Canadian manufacturer, according to the roster.transithistory.org website.
The MBTA had intended to replace all of its Red and Orange Line trains by 2023 under a contract with CRRC, a Chinese manufacturer with a factory in Springfield.
Before the pandemic, the MTBA had hoped to have an all-new fleet of 152 cars running on the Orange Line by the end of 2021, and have 252 new Red Line cars in service by 2023.
But various manufacturing problems have delayed those timelines significantly. Only one CRRC-manufactured "pilot" train has carried passengers on the Red Line so far, and it's been out of service ever since another CRRC-manufactured train derailed on the Orange Line in March.
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