Photo by PoPville flickr user District Shots

“Dear PoPville,

This morning I was waiting for the metro at Dupont station and as I was waiting, a train pulled up going in the opposite direction and one of the middle cars was literally billowing with smoke. Now, I’ve often entered a metro station only to smell something burning, but in this case a train packed with people pulled up right in front of me and you could actually visibly see the smoke rising from beneath the car. And there was a lot of smoke; it smelled absolutely horrible. The people waiting with me just stared in amazement and some even took pictures (maybe someone will read this and send it in). The packed train then took off, clearly not recognizing that one of its cars was burning.

We’ve all had issues with and complained about the metro, but I don’t recall ever reading something on this site about burning metro cars. My question to PoPville is: does anyone know what is causing it, and what, if anything, is metro doing to address the problem?”