I’ve spilled quite a bit of digital ink writing about the retirement of the WMATA 1000 Series and 4000 Series railcars.  Yesterday, car 4014 was trucked from WMATA’s Greenbelt Yard to a scrapyard in Baltimore.  This car was the last of the 4000 Series cars to be removed from WMATA property, truly making the end of the retirement process.  While it is possible that the 8000 Series cars (which are just modified 1000 Series cars) that were used for revenue collection are still on the property, these are scheduled to be scrapped as well and replaced by 6000 Series trains that have been refitted for use on the money train.  All that are left from these two car classes are the 1000-1001 and 4000-4001 pairs, which are being retained for historical purposes.

As I have written before, as someone who grew up in the DC area and has always considered the 1000 Series trains to be my favorites, this is a significant moment in the region’s transportation history.  Once the 1000s were relegated to the middle of train consists after the Fort Totten crash, only when a 4000 Series car was at the head end of a train did it feel like I was on the Metrorail that I grew up with, complete with yellow and orange interior colors and the buzzing of the DC motors on the Breda cars.  Those days have been over since July, and are truly over as of yesterday.

Photo caption:  Breda 4052 (left) and Rohr 1124 at Gallery Place. As of yesterday, all of the 1000 Series and 4000 Series railcars have been removed from WMATA property to be scrapped. Photo taken February 16, 2004.