When I first heard the report it was an empty train sitting on the track I could not believe that could/would happen. It may very well be a report that has been changed, as they have changed the original report that the Metro was using a single rail at the time of the crash.
I don’t think there’s anything shocking about an empty train on the tracks. Sometimes they have issues in inconvenient places, even, and have to get back to the yard empty.
Metro chief John Catoe said the first train was stopped on the tracks, waiting for another to clear the station ahead, when the trailing train, one of the oldest in the Metro fleet, plowed into it from behind.
Officials had no explanation for the accident.
SNIP
From the City Paper:
As for the stopped train, here’s one account of what happened. Dennis, who declined to give his last name, says his train had just barely started to move when the impact happened. Dennis stepped out of the train and could see “three or four people on the ground, all bloody.” Dennis was in the fifth car, one removed from the impact. After staggering out of the train, he spotted a woman on top of that sixth car, and blood was streaming down. “The interior of that car just got crushed,” said Dennis.