Clark County officials described an incident Sunday in which a wheel skirt fell off a Las Vegas Monorail train as "pretty minor," though it delayed the start of the day's operations by almost six hours.
No one was injured in the 6:30 a.m. incident, in which a skirt fell off one train, then was run over by another, during a pre-opening test run near the Sahara Avenue station, county officials said Wednesday.
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There were no passengers aboard any trains at the time of the incident.
Service resumed shortly before 1 p.m., said Curtis Myles, president and chief executive of the Las Vegas Monorail Co. The $650 million, four-mile rapid transit line behind the Strip's east side normally opens to the public at 7 a.m. daily.
"It's pretty minor," Ron Lynn, who heads the building division of the county's Department of Development Services, which regulates the monorail, said of the incident. "Things are going to break in a dynamic system."
The 4-foot Fiberglas skirt, which weighs less than 10 pounds and shields the monorail's rubber tires, is secured to the train by galvanized rubber strips that Lynn called "bungees."
On the train in question, the bungees did not appear to have been properly latched to the train, Myles said.
"I'm not concerned that things are going to happen every now and then. But that's a preventable thing," he said.
Myles added that he expects monorail builder and operator Bombardier Inc. to review its preservice inspection procedures to ensure such a mistake isn't overlooked.
Sunday was only the fourth day this year that the monorail was shut down for an extended period because of technical or mechanical problems.
The system spent much of last year in mothballs because of such problems.
Three times last year, metal parts fell from moving trains, prompting shutdowns. One such systemwide closure lasted 107 days.
County officials said the system appears to have been reliable this year. Twice in May, it was shut down because of what appeared to be computer glitches on the driverless trains. On Feb. 2, a power loss crippled the system for several hours.
The monorail plans to extend its daily operating hours to 3 a.m., starting Wednesday. The system currently closes at 2 a.m. each day.
