Type 4 woes, June 18th evening rush hour

That should be “Holladay”..

Yeah.  So.  Just in time for evening rush hour yesterday, an eastbound  Type 4 Blue line train broke down at NE 60th, which took about 4 hours to resolve.  Oh, those pretty Type 4s.. and #yourcommuteisscrewed for those of you playing along on Twitter.

How many cars in that train?

I couldn’t get over there to get any video or photos, so I’m very pleased that Bob R was able to do so – and he got some great footage!

There are a lot of neat things there that passengers rarely see, like how trains are coupled (notice the safety stop at at about the 1:02 mark to check alignment of the coupler heads) or the fold-out coupler head under the cab of the Type 4s that fits with the coupler heads of the rest of the fleet, or brakes being pumped off, and what a dead car push looks and sounds like.  A dead car push is one of the most dangerous things done with a train, as the operator pushing the dead car (or in this case, train) can’t see what’s ahead, and essentially the dead car no longer has operational brakes as they’ve been pumped off – there are still the track brakes though, which the flagger in the front of the dead car who acts as eyes can use in the event of an emergency.

Again, many cheers for Jason McHuff snagging the ODOT traffic camera picture, and to Bob R at Portland Transport for going out there & getting this video.