When Larry P. Mitchell heard about the Metro crash last month, the recently retired train operator thought of the operator who was killed when she ran into a stopped train.
“To see all that coming at you at that speed. She must have been horrified,” he told The Examiner. “I know exactly how she felt.”
The 58-year-old had his own close call driving a Metro train on June 7, 2005. As an operator with 12 years of experience, he was working overtime during the evening commute, coming from the Foggy Bottom station toward Rosslyn on the Orange and Blue lines.
He was under the Potomac River, traveling 59 mph in automatic mode, with a full train. But he didn’t know a train was stopped ahead, waiting for another to clear the station ahead — just like in the deadly June 22 crash.
“When I came around the corner I could see a reflection of the train’s lights on the wall and the track surface,” he said.
His train started to drop speed as it was supposed to do. “I didn’t feel I was in danger because I was slowing down,” he said. “But I was still closing in on the train, closer than I was accustomed to.”
The speed commands showed the train dropping from 59 mph to 35 mph, then to 28 mph. “But they never went to zero.”
He decided he was getting too close. He overrode the system and pushed the brakes. His train stopped 35 feet from the other train.
“Too close for comfort,” he said.
“Too close for comfort,” he said.
Mitchell called the operations center to let it know of the incident.
“I heard another train operator cut into the conversation, and he told central control he just pushed the emergency brake,” he said. “His train stopped 12 feet from mine, and you could hear the panic in his voice. Then I knew something was wrong.”
Trains are not supposed to come close to each other. An elaborate system alerts the transit system — and even shuts down trains — when they get too close.
“I was understandably shaken,” Mitchell said. “This is not supposed to happen.”
Mitchell and the other operator, Joseph Graham, were awarded top Metro safety prizes that December. But for Mitchell it was a haunting experience.
Later, when he trained new train operators, he told them the story as a warning. “I just wanted them to know the system can let you down.”
