Derailment at Newton Center

The announcement that was running tonight around 11:30pm at Government Center said that "Due to construction on the Highland Branch, bussing will occur between Newton Centre and Riverside." I assume this has something to due with the accident today, but if so, I would think the bussing would begin somewhere prior to the Newton Centre stop... so maybe it's something different?

Another thing that struck me odd was the use of the term "Highland Branch". I've never heard anyone call the D-Line that outside of the rollsigns on the older trolleys (Boeings and Type 7s pre 3650 I think). I would think that many non-railfans would have no idea what the Highland Branch was.

They are Type 7s. Type 8s do not operate in revenue service on the Riverside Line at this time.

Good thing then, I was worried that they were another set of M8s. Glad that wasn't the case here.......

As for M7 3669, I guess it will have to go to the recycle bin, since it looks way too damaged.

Might not have been 3669... Scott Moore's website says it was 3679. It was kinda hard to tell in the photo that I saw yesterday on Boston.com. I'll have to keep an eye out for 3669 to be certain.

Whichever car it was, I agree with Robert that it doesn't look like the kind of damage that can be repaired. But if the B-end of one car hit the A-end on the other, they can always put the two undamaged halves of the two cars together and get one good car out of it anyway.

Yeah, that's right, Jon. It's happened before, and they can make a new trolley out of the wrecked ones.

WBZ-4/UPN 38 had quite a bit of footage of both trains. I was in awe to see the damage on the front end of the ramming car. The train looked particlurally twisted. Whoever stated earlier that it was a blessing the motorman didn't get fatally injured or something to that effect was on the mark! I was in shock to see the impact damage.

They reported that the "T was investigating if this was operator error" That was an understatement if I ever heard one!

Lets not be so quick to judge -- IIRC, and from the Boston.com pictures, this area is rather wooded and the areas around the tracks "leafy." While it seems clear that something else went wrong, I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of undesirerable track conditions contributed to the incident.

leaves on the tracks still would not have caused something that bad, not if the operator was following correct red-signal proceedure.

And if the operator is vindicated by following all correct proceedures I wouldn't be surprised if there is a major overhaul of proceedures to ensure another incident like that doesn't happen again.

It will be interesting if the Green Line's most recent rear-ender, combined with the frequency with which they occur, leads to talk of some sort of improved signal system -- with some sort of train control, at least on the signalized portions of the line. I've lived in Boston for over eight years now, and there's been at least 4 or 5 read end collisions that I can recall in that period. Thankfully, most all of these haven't been as bad as yesterday's.

I spoke with John Belcher and he is confirming it was 3679 not 69 and will give me an update on if the are able to splice the cars and bring 1 car back to service more to follow.

3679 to be rebuilt with the good ends of 3679A and 3623B will be out in 6 months or less from what Johnathan was telling me today. 3623A end will eventually be brought back after some major structure work.

I hate to sound stupid but what exactly will happen to 3623A, will it be matched up with 3623B or matched with an extensivly re-built 3679B?

Also I don't think anyone has noticed that 3623 is the final EL car.

3623B they might try to salvage the end which was damaged at Newton Centre. 3679A is totaled and will be striped for parts and likley scrapped when the next line of cars get scraped. If they determine they cannot salvage 3623B it will be scrapped too

Too bad the Type 8 order didn't go well maybe we would of seen to extra purchased to replace the wrecked T7's

Perhaps they can take a B end from one of the long-stored wrecked cars and mate it up with 3623A, if the damage to one of those stored sections is not too great.

If I remember right, shop forces were actually attempting to rebuild wrecked car 3648 until Watertown Carhouse was closed as a heavy repair facility. The car is still sitting in the carhouse to this day. Don't know how much progress they made before work stopped, but perhaps they could get the B end from that (which was originally 3639B). Somebody obviously thought it was repairable at the time, so it seems to me to be a possible candidate to make 3623 whole again.

According to NETransit, the possible candidates to mate with 3623A if/when it gets repaired are 3638B or 3666B.

3648A/3639B at Watertown was deemed too far gone to repair, and during the years it has languished there it has been stripped of just about every part that could be salvaged.