That Red Line derailment caused by an old axle snapping

Typical knee jerk reactions by people without the necessary basic understanding to make any type of relevant comments

Neither the reporter nor the reader apparently knows the rudiments of: [well you name it]:

1. How a brush acts to complete an electrical circuit between a fixed an rotating or sliding contact
2. How electricity flows in a circuit
3. What an arc is and how it can heat things
4. The effects of constant heating an cooling on a piece of steel
5. etc

I listened and watched the presentation by the Assistant GM on the issue:
He was well briefed by his engineering team -- who seemed to have done a thorough job of investigating the accident

A few key points:

1. First-- this was an unusual failure
2. review of T's maintenance data going back decades showed no other instance of this electrically induced axle fracture
3. The incipient cause seems to have been excessive pitting to the rotating component known as the contact ring upon which the brush bears to complete the electrical circuit
4. this electrical contact failure [apparently intermittent failure of good contact] caused intermittent arcing between the brush assembly and the axle
5. the intermittent arcing caused intermittent repetitive heating and cooling of the axle
6. the cycling of the temperature caused embrittlement of the axle
7. The best estimate was that about 6 months elapsed since the arcing began -- this would not have been caught by the regularly scheduled maintenance inspections -- since the current inspection process did not include detailed inspection of the contact ring [although routine inspection and replacement of the brush assembly is performed frequently]
8. bi-annual inspection using ultrasound would have detected the crack forming in the axle
9. poor timing -- the entire fleet of Red Line vehicles including the one which had the bad axle would have been inspected by ultrasound beginning in July this year
10. as a consequence the T will begin to do full inspections including ultrasound on an annual basis
11. the T will also add complete visual inspection of the contact rings to the regular inspections that look for problems with the brushes -- approximately every 3 months based on vehicle mileage
12. the T will contact other Transit operations with similar technology used for the brushes and contact rings
13. Finally -- the new Red and Orange Line trains use a more advanced electromechanical system with multiple brushes to insure reliable electrical conduction

This is the same agency that had scheduling and shifts handwritten in a binder. Same agency that tracks union seniority date by index cards. Same agency that performs benefit enrollment via paper forms and fax. The MBTA had the season pick performed by posting available jobs on paper in a room. You think they could have a database of equipment? Ha! If they do, it is in Dbase on an AppleIIe