MTA restores partial service on Nos. 1, 2, 3, subway lines after Manhattan collision; brake and motor eyed in probe

Partial service was restored Friday evening on the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 subway lines in Manhattan as investigators revealed that half of the cars on one train in a derailment and collision that hurt two dozen straphangers Thursday had no working motors or brakes.

The service restoration at W. 96th St. and points north came as the three subway lines remained snarled in Midtown going into the evening rush hour.

Word that five cars of one of the crashed trains at W. 96th St. had five cars without motors or brakes came from the National Transportation Safety Board, whose investigators were at the scene Friday.

“It was a 10-car train in two sections,” explained Jennifer Homendy, the NTSB chair. “The rear five cars were operational — they were running normal: full brakes, full power. The leading five cars [had] no power, no brakes.”

The train operating without a full compliment of brakes was taken out of service after a vandal or vandals pulled multiple emergency brakes while the train was operating on the No. 1 route near the W. 79th St. station.

“The crew was instructed to cut [brakes and power] so they could move the train,” Homendy said. “Frankly, they couldn’t move the train at the time because [on] one of the cars, the brake wouldn’t reset.”

Based on crew interviews, Homendy said, investigators determined that MTA’s rail control instructed the vandalized train’s crew to use the five working cars to push the five dead cars up beneath Broadway toward the 240th St. Yard in the Bronx, at the northern end of the No. 1 line.

The result was a train whose first five cars had no braking power — and thus could not be stopped by track devices designed to keep trains from running red signal lights.

It also meant the vandalized train had to be operated by a crew member in its middle cab with the aid of another crew member, a “flagger,” at the helm of the train’s lead car.

“That flagger, when you’re operating the train from the middle of the train, is the eyes of the train,” NYCT President Rich Davey explained.

The status of communications between the flagger and the conductor operating the train from the middle cab remains under investigation.

At the time of the incident, the passenger-carrying No. 1 train had a green signal to switch tracks — while the vandalized, out-of-service train had a red signal and no permission to proceed, Davey told reporters.

“As a result, it [the out-of-service train] bumped into the [No. 1] train. Why? We don’t know,” Davey said. “That’s still under investigation.”

FDNY and MTA officials said 24 people were injured in the crash, none seriously.

Richard Davis, president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents the city’s subway workers, said Friday that four transit workers were injured in the smash-up.

The conductor who was serving as the flagger in the lead car of the vandalized train received the most serious injuries, to her neck and legs, Davis said. Her injuries were not considered life-threatening.

Four transit workers were riding in the vandalized train at the time of the incident, and MTA officials estimated roughly 300 people were aboard the No. 1 train.

Crews worked all day Friday to restore service on the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 lines.

“There is an army of people that have been down there overnight. They haven’t slept,” MTA Chairman Janno Lieber said Friday morning outside the station at W. 96th St. and Broadway.

“Nine out of the 10 cars of the passenger (carrying) train that was involved in the collision have been re-railed and moved out of the area,” Lieber said.

All 10 cars of the vandalized, out-of-service train involved in the incident remained on the local track for much of Friday, and needed to be cleared before full service could be restored to the line, MTA officials said.

Service on the No. 1 was suspended between the 137th St.-City College station and Times Square during daytime hours Friday, while service on the No. 3 was suspended between 135th St. in Harlem and Times Square. No. 2 train service ran Friday on the East Side along the No. 4 and 5 train tracks.

The front car of the out-of-service, inadequately-braked train required extensive repairs before it could be removed from the tunnel, Davey said.

“The train is currently sitting on ties, railroad ties, literally wooden blocks,” Davey said, explaining that on one car, the front truck — which contains wheels, their brakes and electric motors — was been mangled in the crash.

“The last piece of this would be to bring [a] new truck, put the car on top of it, and then roll it out,” he said. “With only inches to spare in this tunnel, it’s an incredibly delicate process.”

The crash took place shortly after 3 p.m. Thursday, after No. 1 trains were routed to the express track to get around the disabled, vandalized train at W. 79th Street.

That vandalized train was on its way to the Bronx train yard via the local tracks when it collided with a No. 1 train switching back to the local tracks from the express tracks at W. 96th St.

The vandalized train collided with the No. 1 train roughly at its midpoint, at the third car, a transit source told the Daily News.

Asked how the collision could have happened, Davey said it was still under investigation.

“Keep in mind, this was a disabled train,” he said of the vandalized train.

“This was not a train that was functioning appropriately, which is why you had a several-man crew there,” he said. “In any other scenario, these are two trains working — one wouldn’t have been able to proceed.”

Davey reiterated Friday that the MTA’s initial investigation indicated no problems with switching or signaling equipment.

But Homendy, the NTSB boss, cautioned against characterizing the incident as “human error.”

“It’s easy to blame humans,” she said. “Human error is always a symptom of a system that needs to be redesigned.”

She criticized the MTA for not having inward or outward facing cameras on subway cars, and for not having “black-box” style data recorders on board to track train telemetry such as speed, throttle position and brake activation.

“This is the second accident on New York City Transit’s property in 37 days,” Homendy said when asked why the feds were investigating a relatively low speed crash with minor injuries. “That’s not typical.”

Thursday’s derailment came just over a month after the November death of track worker Hilarion Joseph, who was hit and killed by an uptown D train while working on a track-cleaning crew near the 34th St. – Herald Sq. station.

Joseph’s death remains under investigation by the MTA, the TWU, and the NTSB.

“The NTSB has been very focused on system safety, so we wanted to take a look,” Homendy said.