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Jun 21, 2006 7:54 pm US/Eastern
NJ Transit Riders Suffer 3rd Outage Since May
New Power Fluctations Delay Morning Commuters
NEWARK (CBS/AP) ―
Rail service between Newark and New York City was temporarily suspended Wednesday morning because of power problems on the Northeast Corridor, bringing to three the number of power problems Amtrak has suffered in a month.
Cliff Black, an Amtrak spokesman, said there was a brief power fluctuation at 8:05 a.m. in the New York area. He said trains were stopped briefly but were moving again by 8:33 a.m.
New Jersey Transit trains were operating with delays of 15 minutes to New York as of 10:30 a.m. Trains leaving New York were on or close to schedule.
Amtrak trains also were moving; details about service were not immediately available.
At the Secaucus station, three trains stopped on the tracks Wednesday morning and several hundred people had emptied onto the platforms. Announcements were made for people to go to Hoboken and take PATH trains into New York.
About 15 minutes later, station personnel told travelers they could get back aboard NJ Transit trains.
Gregory Storey, 55, was on an NJ Transit train that he said was stuck between Secaucus and Newark. The train had been stopped for 25 or 30 minutes until it started moving around 8:45 a.m., he said.
"Here we go again," said Storey, who lives in New Jersey and works in New York City. "These guys just cannot get it right."
Wednesday's power problems came less than a month after an Amtrak power outage caused widespread disruption of rail service between Washington and Boston, stranding tens of thousands of passengers, some of whom were stuck for four hours in sweltering tunnels.
The May 25 outage affected not only the nation's passenger railroad, but also commuter lines in New Jersey, Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Amtrak says it still does not know what triggered that outage, which it characterized as a "load-sharing failure" of power stations and substations between Chester, Pa., and Philadelphia.
A power failure on June 2 outside of Philadelphia lasted 45 minutes when a transmission line took itself off line during a thunderstorm. That caused a frequency converter to shut down.
WCBSTV.Com Train Trouble Coverage
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(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
