Train service along the Northeast Corridor remained disrupted early Friday, with a half-dozen trains canceled, after a power outage closed all lines for more than three hours Thursday and caused significant delays at the Arriving and departing from the nation’s busiest transit hub.
Amtrak said that on Thursday, one of the hottest days of the year, the loss of power forced it to suspend all service along this 150-mile stretch of rail, which runs through Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan , around 2:10 p.m. repairs, service was partially restored around 5:30 p.m.
The disruption spread along the Eastern Seaboard, causing trains to be stopped and canceled as far away as Boston and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The after-effects seemed to continue until the Friday morning commute, with two Acela trains And four North-East regional trains scheduled from 4:50 a.m. canceled due to previous disruptions, according to Amtrak.
Gery Williams, Amtrak’s executive vice president, said the problem stemmed from a “faulty circuit breaker” in New Jersey, just west of the rail tunnels under the Hudson River, which knocked out power to the cables airlines which supply arriving and departing trains. tunnels. This segment of the corridor has only two tracks and is the main bottleneck for train travel in the Northeast. Any disruption to this narrow passage can cause headaches for thousands of travelers.
Mr. Williams said the electrical problem was not related to a brush fire in Secaucus, New Jersey, on Thursday afternoon, which was burning near the railroad tracks and the New Jersey Turnpike. This fire was extinguished Thursday evening.
One of Amtrak’s Acela trains was already running more than an hour late when it got stuck just east of Newark without air conditioning, Williams said. These passengers were transferred to other trains, he said. Another Amtrak train was stuck in Queens, also without air conditioning. Amtrak sent a diesel engine to bring that train back to Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, he said.
Mr. Williams apologized to customers of Amtrak and New Jersey Transit, whose trains share the portion of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor between New York and Trenton, New Jersey.
He said he met with New Jersey Transit officials Thursday to develop plans to modernize rail infrastructure “so our customers no longer have to endure this horrible experience.” He said there had been “too many” significant disruptions recently.
New Jersey Transit diverted Penn Station-bound trains to the Hoboken Terminal and accepted train tickets on its buses during hours they were out of service. The PATH train between Manhattan and New Jersey also honored train tickets.
Jim Casey, 59, had been waiting at the station for nearly three hours Thursday evening. The delays, he said, had put a damper on his evening plans to go to the beach.
“Right now, there’s an entrance tunnel and an exit tunnel,” said Mr. Casey, who travels to Manhattan from Bucks County, Pennsylvania. “If something goes wrong in the tunnels, we’re stuck.”
When asked if he thought the situation would improve in the future, Mr Casey did not hesitate. He wasn’t optimistic that “this problem will ever go away,” he said.
He said he was late for work Tuesday due to delays and then waited two hours after work the same day to return home.
Across the river at Penn Station in Newark, Ilana Nathan was trying to get from Long Island to her home in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Her train at Penn Station in Manhattan was canceled, but she was then able to board her replacement. Then that was canceled too, but only after she sat on it for 90 minutes (without air conditioning).
A station official advised him to take a PATH train to Newark. She paid a premium price for an Uber to the World Trade Center station. When she arrived in Newark, she found that all trains were canceled. At that point, she had been in transit for six hours.
“I’m hot, I’m exasperated,” Ms Nathan, 29, said. “I just want to go home.”
This is at least the fourth disruption in the past two months to cause long delays for metro area commuters.
Tuesday morning, New Jersey Transit service to and from New York’s Penn Station was suspended for about an hour and all Amtrak trains passing through the station were delayed due to overhead wire problems and a commuter train stalled on the tracks, train officials said.
The disruption ruined the morning commute for thousands of New Jersey residents as delays rippled across the state’s various rail lines.
Tuesday’s problems came on the heels of significant delays during peak hours at Penn Station earlier this month, caused by an inspection of Amtrak-owned tracks. Service was significantly delayed by over an hour.
Service was also interrupted in May when an overhead wire used for traffic signals fell and struck a cable in Kearny, New Jersey, that supplies electricity to Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor trains. The trains were stopped on Amtrak and New Jersey Transit in both directions between Penn Station and Newark, and delays stretched to more than four hours.
Maia Coleman, Nathan Schweber And Victoria Kim reports contributed.
