LRT train stopped Tuesday after operator heard a noise

OTTAWA -

OC Transpo staff say a train was stopped on the Confederation Line LRT Tuesday out of an abundance of caution.

OC Transpo reported reduced service between Lyon and Tunney's Pasture stations due to the stopped train at Bayview Station Tuesday afternoon.

"Customers will need to change trains at Lyon," OC Transpo said in a tweet.

At Wednesday's Transit Commission meeting, OC Transpo's director of transit operations Troy Charter said the train's operator heard a sound. 

"The operator of the train heard something, did the right thing and reported it," Charter said. "The sound appeared to be getting louder—stopped the train. Safety first. A technician came and inspected that train, said it's fit to get to Tunney's Pasture, we took it to Tunney's Pasture, let it sit there and did a more detailed inspection at that point. That train was fit to return to the maintenance and storage facility. Returned it at night to the maintenance and storage facility and it's going through a more detailed inspection there now."

Regular service resumed just after 4:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Coun. Allan Hubley, the chair of the transit commission, said riders wouldn't have seen delays of more than a couple of minutes.

"My understanding is the delays wouldn’t be any more than a couple of minutes right now,' he said earlier Tuesday. "We just switched people right away onto one of those spares that we have, and we’ll take care of that immobilized train after and get that fixed. But we still have seven trains here."

Partial service resumed on the Confederation Line on Friday after a 54-day shutdown because of two derailments. The first four days had gone smoothly.

The city announced earlier Tuesday it would stop running replacement buses along the LRT line after Tuesday's rush hour because of a smooth first few days of train service.

Hubley said he understands why riders would be frustrated with delays so soon after the train's return.

"It's not news we wanted to hear," he said. "I can understand the frustration of our riders. We apologize for this."