NEW YORK — Amtrak operations between New York’s Penn Station and New Haven, Conn., remains suspended to begin today (Wednesday, Nov. 13) as a result of Tuesday electrical fires in the Bronx.
Service was suspended as of Tuesday afternoon because of a pair of fires, one involving a transformer fire at a warehouse and another at a nearby Amtrak substation [see “Fire knocks out power on Amtrak route …,” Trains News Wire, Nov. 12, 2024]. The New York Post has photos and video of one of the fires, which it estimates is no more than 15 feet from Amtrak’s route.
As of late Tuesday, Amtrak said in a service alert that its personnel were assessing and repairing track damage that resulted from the fires. The company was estimating normal operations would resume at approximately 2 p.m. ET today.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Metro-North Railroad continues to honor Amtrak tickets between Grand Central Terminal and New Haven, but passengers must find their own transportation between Penn Station and Grand Central. Updates will be available on the Amtrak NEC Alerts feed on X.com.
This is at least the third instance this year in which Metro-North has provided service to New Haven for Amtrak customers because of issues on Amtrak’s Hell Gate Line between Penn Station and New Rochelle, N.Y.. It happened twice in July: Once after a power outage eventually attributed to a lightning strike [see “Amtrak NEC service halted between New York, Boston,” July 6, 2024], and once because of emergency track repairs in the Bronx [see “Amtrak restores service after latest NEC interruption,” News Wire, July 22, 2024].
What is the problem of no shuttle buses between NYP NYG? Surely the MTA could assign a couple of its standby buses to run dedicated shuttle service? We need a fly on the wall to tell us wat the heck? Even the only nothing else counts = NEC screw the passengers.
In the time it would take a bus in Manhattan traffic, you could beat it doing the backstroke. The subway connection is fine.