A broken track that brought a crowded Lexington Avenue subway train to a grinding halt Wednesday night passed an inspection by the Transit Authority just last week, officials said.
The derailment of the No. 5 train left some riders stranded for up to two hours and caused massive delays along one of the subway system’s busiest lines.
TA officials said there was no indication that the steel track was weak in any way until moments before the derailment.
A visual inspection on April 3 gave the track a clean bill of health. Before that, a more rigorous ultrasound inspection in February found no signs of defects in the metal, said TA spokesman Al O’Leary.
But on Wednesday night, minutes before the derailment, a motorman on an uptown train radioed the TA command center to report a “strange sound” after rolling north on the express track.
TA dispatchers put out an alert to other train operators on the line, ordering them to slow down. O’Leary said it’s not clear whether the derailed train’s motorman got the alert in time.
The section of broken rail was replaced by yesterday’s morning rush hour. A metallurgist has been called in to determine why the rail broke. The track was installed in 1993.
The No. 5 train was packed with about 1,800 passengers when the track broke.
Passengers on the train complained that the last group of stranded straphangers had to wait as long as two hours before they were finally evacuated.
TA officials said two trains running behind the derailed train had to be emptied of passengers before they could be rolled up to help evacuate the stranded straphangers.
The first rescue train arrived in about an hour.