What to Know
- A series of power problems repeatedly brought rail traffic to a halt Wednesday at New York Penn Station, creating commuter nightmares
- At one point Wednesday morning there were three trains stuck in the Hudson River tunnels on the New Jersey side
- As evening rush hour commenced, there were still residual delays being reported by both NJ Transit and Amtrak, but most trains were on time
A series of power problems repeatedly brought rail traffic to a halt Wednesday afternoon at New York Penn Station, creating commuter nightmares for riders on NJ Transit and Amtrak.
At one point Wednesday morning there were three trains stuck in the Hudson River tunnels on the New Jersey side, with no power and passengers complaining of stifling heat.
Amtrak had one overhead power issue that stopped traffic between 10:30 a.m. and 11 a.m., and then a second issue just after noon that stopped trains against for about 15 minutes. There was also a separate transformer issue that may or may not have been related, but that caused delays.
Social media was full of widespread complaints from riders.
"All power out, getting hot," former Morris County Prosecutor Bob Bianchi tweeted during the first outage.
As it approched rush hour, NJ Transit was warning customers of potential 60-minute delays for Northeast Corridor and New Jersey Coast Line service, while Amtrak said delays ranged up to two hours.
As the evening commuting rush moved along, NJ Transit was no longer reporting any delays, saying at 4:30 p.m. that trains were running on or close to schedule for the lines affected earlier, with some residual delays to trains still enroute.
Amtrak was still reporting a handful of delays, but the majority of their trains were running on time by 5 p.m. as well.
For the latest transit updates, see the tweets below.
