PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — SEPTA’s Lansdale/Doylestown Line was delayed for several hours Thursday morning due to a train fire at Oreland Station.
Officials said a brake pad on one of the train’s wheels caught fire. SEPTA workers quickly evacuated 317 passengers, and firefighters extinguished the flames under the train car.
“I had to go under there, the wheel … was about 400 degrees,” said AJ, a volunteer firefighter with the Oreland Fire Company. “We were looking at it with a thermal imaging camera, and it was hot. I was next to it and it was radiating heat off.”
Passengers were directed to other trains to get to their destinations.
SEPTA said this was an isolated incident, and the impacted train was not a Silverliner IV car, the type of rail car that has had problems with electrical fires in the past. Five fires on those cars last year prompted federally mandated inspections, which caused cancellations and delays for months.
SEPTA said it is examining all of the train's systems to figure out what caused the fire.