I just found out that the full report about the November 3, 2004 accident at Woodley Park-Zoo came out on the NTSB’s Web site. And I’ve been reading the 66-page report for a while now. I’m on page 18 out of 66 total. So I’m getting somewhere.
And it’s great to finally read exactly what happened in this accident. You may recall that I was in Washington the day after the accident happened, and actually got to see the accident scene firsthand. It was something.
I was amazed, though, about how the first several feet of Rohr 1077 were just plain gone. In my photos, the roof was hanging down from what remained of the car. I received an interior shot of 1077 after it had been taken to Brentwood, but it wasn’t quite the same as seeing it in the accident scene. The NTSB report had a photo of 1077 in place at the accident scene:
Photo: NTSB
I was just like, whoa, when I saw this. In telescoping, the floor went UP towards the ceiling, upsetting a number of seats in the process. That is something I did not quite expect. I would have thought that with telescoping, since the train basically came apart at the seams, the floor would not have done that. Guess I was wrong.
And now, back to my reading of the rest of the report.