New euphemisms: "disabled train"

[dmaze]

I again caught the 95 today, but traffic in Sullivan sucked to the point where it just missed the CT2, so I hopped on the subway instead. Got to Downtown Crossing to catch the red line. We went one stop to Park Street. About the time I'd expect them to close the doors, they instead announced, "this train has become disabled and is going out of service". So everyone got off the train. At which point all of the doors closed and the train left the station under its own power. This must be some new definition of "disabled" I'm not aware of.

But the signal at the outbound end of the Park Street platform showed red-over-yellow, which is something I haven't seen before. (On not-the-green-line, I think that signal aspect just means "diverging" -- "cross on to a track you're not on".) The train crossed over on to the other track and turned around. At least it had the decency to not stop at Park Street on the return when it came back through the station.

Comments

[exponentialdk.livejournal.com]

I've been told recently (don't remember by whom) that "disabled train" is the euphemism for "someone committed suicide with a train". But having been on a train that clearly became disabled, I know that there are real reasons for disability.

My guess is they either screwed up in the announcement, and meant to indicate that another train was disabled (or that the track ahead was unavailable for some other reason), or they decided something about your train was unsafe for passengers.

If they actually had a disabling problem with your train worthy of euphemism, I'd think you'd have heard someone else on the platform mention it. ("No shit, there I was when I heard a gunshot and saw blood splattered all over the conductor's window!")

[dmaze]

Perhaps. The other euphemism I've experienced is being on an orange line train with "signal problems", the nature of such apparently requiring the T police to remove a passenger from the train. But if there was something that involved a passenger being injured or killed, I'd expect the train to wait in the station for paramedics and/or police, not to leave right away. It clearly was the train I was on that turned around and went back towards Cabot Yard with no passengers, and there was another train right behind it that made normal stops towards Alewife.

[iabervon.livejournal.com]

It might have been a real problem which didn't preclude limping out of the way of other trains. For example, if most of the brakes died, they wouldn't want to zip off towards Charles with passengers, but they might be willing to drive it carefully to the yard without passengers.