NEW YORK — Amtrak service on the Northeast Corridor between Boston and New York City was restored as of about 9 p.m. Saturday night, the passenger operator announced late Saturday evening.
The company says the preliminary cause is a lightning strike that disrupted power.
Normal operations are planned for today except for three early trains — New Haven-Washington No. 143; Philadelphia-Boston No. 150; and Washington-Boston No. 162 — that were cancelled because of equipment being out of position. Train No. 54, the northbound Vermonter, and No. 157 were to operate on modified schedules.
The mass media doesn’t cover Amtrak very well. This isn’t mass media, it’s Trains Magazine.
So what exactly happened when and where? If it was a problem on the Hell Gate route (f/k/a New York Connecting Railway), then Amtrak could have run anywhere east of New Rochelle, all the way east to Boston. Why should a Boston-bound passenger in Connecticut or Rhode Island have been stranded?
If Amtrak didn’t want to turn at New Rochelle, there’s always Stamford, Bridgeport or New Haven.
There may be an explanation. Probably there is an explanation. But we’ve not yet seen it on these pages.
In a past lifetime I was a regular on the New Haven Railroad in its absolute depth of decrepitude. The trains were broken down and filthy. Sometimes there weren’t enough seats, so people stood in the aisles. The stations were squalid. The windows were broken. I was never left without transportation.
Now it’s the evening of July 8th. So far I’ve seen limited coverage in Wall Street Journal, Washington Examiner, and Trains Magazine (all three on-line). None of the three, not even Trains, has given any detail what happened where. Or, for the matter, why Amtrak failed to run turns east of New Rochelle.
Washington Examiner, a right-wing opinion site, took the opportunity to bash Amtrak in general, stating that Amtrak is well-funded and that NEC is supposed to be its showpiece railroad.
I’ve seen nothing in the other outlets I read each day on-line, those being news sites and political commentary sites.
I would hope that Trains Magazine would give us some detail in the days to come.