NEW YORK — Amtrak says service has been fully restored between New York’s Penn Station and Philadelphia.
The company said “all services are operating” in a post shortly before 8 a.m. ET today (Dec. 24, 2024) on its Northeast Corridor alerts feed on X.com. However, Amtrak also reports that Acelas No. 2154 (a 7 a.m. Washington-Boston train), No. 2173 (a 4:15 p.m. departure from Boston for Washington) , and No. 2124 (a 6:30 p.m. Washington-New York train) have been cancelled because of mechanical and equipment issues.
The problems on the Northeast Corridor began early on Sunday, Dec. 22, with downed overhead wires near Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, leading Amtrak to suspend Philadelphia-New York service for most of the morning. Delays continued throughout the day as the four tracks in the area were slowly returned to operation [see “Some Amtrak, NJ Transit service … restored,” Trains News Wire, Dec. 22, 2024]
On Monday morning, the company reported that passengers should expect delays in and out of New York Penn Station because of signal power issues, and that operations on the entire corridor were being affected by “crew constraints and residual issues” [see “Amtrak Northeast Corridor issues continue,” News Wire, Dec. 23, 2024]. At least 10 trains were cancelled as a result.
U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) called the Amtrak issues “completely unacceptable” on Monday, saying many passengers were unable to rebook trips online and could not reach agents by phone.
“Amtrak’s latest service meltdown during the holiday season is an unmitigated disaster,” Pallone said in a press release. “Commuters, and holiday travelers are being left in the lurch without basic support or answers. Cancelling trains with no viable solutions in place is completely unacceptable. Amtrak has received historic federal investments to improve service reliability, and yet these failures continue. It’s clear more accountability and urgency are needed.”
Pallone was one of 11 members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation who called for an investigation into Amtrak issues on the corridor earlier this year [see “New Jersey congressional delegation seeks investigation …,” News Wire, June 26, 2024. Corridor issues in New Jersey eventually led New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy to call a meeting with Amtrak and NJ Transit representatives, leading to a joint effort to address those problems [see “Amtrak, NJ Transit pledge to work together …,” News Wire, June 28, 2024].
— Updated at 4:10 p.m. with cancellation of Acela No. 2124.
Amtrak seems to have just about fully recovered. Today at 1530h all trains just going on the BOS WASH segment were in the green. There were just a few showing some yellow apparently delayed due to late arrivals at off NEC destinations last night.
Nationwide looks fairly good with only 14 delayed 6:00 +due to an incident with a vehicle.
The same cannot be said for VIA as more than 1/2 show significant delays.
The wire problem was at Frankford Junction some 6.1 miles East of ZOO on the NEC Main Line to NY. The Atlantic City Line diverges here to cross the Delair Bridge to NJ (freight to Camden; pax to AC).
PHL Harrisburg service was not interrupted so wire down happened somewhere north of ZOO. Now there has been no indication to why all tracks were down. All that wire is the old style 4 track PRR CAT attachments. Amtrak needs to eliminate that method quickly, so these incidents do not happen when a PAN snags a CAT wire on one of the tracks. Unfortunately, at this location the MAX speeds do not need constant tension until the ROW is straightened from Frankford to near ZOO. Now if a tree fell it may have snagged all 4 tracks. That is a different problem calling for all tall tree removals.
Amtrak needs a very expensive allocation to change out all the PRR style NYP WASH to either constant tension or at least SAP to eliminate all track’s CAT being directly connected.