Amtrak and commuter service between New York and Philadelphia was suspended for hours at the height of the evening rush hour on Wednesday after catenary came down in Kearny, N.J.
Service between New York and Newark, N.J., was initially suspended at 5:05 p.m., prompting backups that cascaded along the Northeast Corridor. An Amtrak spokesman told the New York Times that some northbound trains bound for New York were terminated in Philadelphia, where passengers had to find their own alternate transportation.
Limited service was restored around 10 p.m. “As of 10:34 p.m. ET, due to downed power lines east of New York (NYP), trains experienced extensive delays. As crews work to restore power, trains are single tracking and will experience residual delays throughout the night,” Amtrak said in a service advisory.
The delays were expected to linger today on the Northeast Corridor.
In an advisory this morning, NJ Transit said its rail commuters should expect delays and cancellations today due to residual impacts resulting from crew availability and equipment that was out of position as a result of last evening’s service disruption. The only exception: Service on its Atlantic City line was normal this morning.
In Philadelphia, SEPTA told its rail commuters to expect residual delays this morning on its Trenton Line.
It was not immediately clear what downed the overhead wires, an Amtrak spokesman said last night.
Careful now; all those expenses will have a big adverse effect on executive bonuses!
1. NJT/CR line to Atlantic City branches off at Frankford Jct in Phila. Motive power is all-diesel. This is the line an overheight truck hit about a month ago.
2. What got hit might not have been the actual catenary. There’s a lot of wire up there and only a small part of it is the contact wire and its suspension.
3. “passengers had to find their own alternate transportation.” NJT and SEPTA combined don’t have enough buses or operators to handle the traffic and run their own service in the AM.
4. Back in the day, Reading Company couldn’t handle PRR’s traffic either. One time, RDG was moving a detoured through train Phila to NY with a freight engine and the GG1 along for the ride. The PRR engineer, knowing both PRR and RDG used 11 kV 25 Hz power, offered to put his pan up and help. The RDG engineer said he was SPECIFICALLY told not to do that.
Look closely at the PRR style CAT in the picture. You will see how all track’s CAT is attached together so any snag or tree on one track may pull down all track’s CAT. So, even though constant tension CAT is not needed for higher speeds between NYP and Newark this is the result of not replacing PRR style especially this section. Now if constant tension is planned for all the Gateway projects have not been able to determine,
Some of Amtrak’s biggest capital expenses should be for catenary replacement, as they recently did between Trenton and New Brunswick. Especially valuable if they ever get the new Acela sets operating.