Yesterday afternoon, downed wires in a train tunnel caused hours of delays for trains in the Northeast Corridor yesterday.
The downed wires stopped a passenger train from entering the tunnels, and then the domino effect: Amtrak trains from Boston were backed up on their way to NYC, while trains from Philadelphia to NYC only made it to Newark.
The outage occurred around 8:30AM and service was restored around 2:30PM, after affecting at least 50,000 riders on Amtrak and NJ Transit. While outages can happen, it's probably better it happened on the weekend before Thanksgiving, instead of Tuesday or Wednesday before Thanksgiving (which is when Penn Station becomes a zoo like no other; note to travelers - wear body armor while scurrying to trains with your pies!).
Though some Sunday travelers were rerouted, others weren't told much. One man traveling with his wife and three kids said, "They didn't tell us anything convenient," and a Yale student said Amtrak didn't even announce her train was canceled. Beth Banks told the Daily News, "Nobody told us and they said we could wait till tomorrow for a new train or take a bus from Port Authority. The bus left at 4:30 and we didn't leave [Penn Station] till 4, so now we're waiting for a 6:30 bus. Granted, they paid for the taxi, but $6 for a taxi will not make up for spending all day in New York."
