Damage to an overhead power line on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor near Newark, N.J., brought train travel between New Jersey and New York Penn Station to a halt for an hour Monday morning, snarling the morning commute.
The downed wire suspended all travel on the Northeast corridor between Philadelphia and New York at about 9:30 a.m. Monday, before service began to resume shortly after 10:30 a.m.
NJ Transit service — which also operates on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor line — also resumed around 10:30 a.m.
Service had suspended on the Northeast Corridor as well as the North Jersey Coast Line north of Long Branch, with trains bound for New York Penn being redirected to NJ Transit’s Hoboken terminal.
Amtrak spokesman Jason Abrams told the Daily News that passengers should expect delays of “less than an hour” as trains began running again.
The damage to the overhead wires was in the “Newark, New Jersey, area,” according to an automated announcement played over the loudspeaker at the Moynihan Train Hall. “We sincerely thank you for your patience and apologize for any inconvenience.”
Abrams said the cause of the wire break “is still under investigation.”
In a statement, Amtrak characterized the outage as an “unexpected situation” — though power failures on the section of track approaching New York Penn Station have become commonplace.
Amtrak’s aging infrastructure, much of it initially installed by the now-defunct Pennsylvania Rail Road, has combined with NJ Transit’s aging rolling stock to create a summer of misery for Garden State commuters and regional rail riders, with frequent failures of both signaling and traction power systems — often multiple times per week.
Failures of the overhead catenary wires — the power lines that function much like the third rail on a subway — have been a regular occurrence on the rail line in recent months.
In May, an overhead signal wire shorted the catenary near Kearny, N.J., prompting Garden State Gov. Phil Murphy to call the ongoing outages an “unmitigated disaster,” and demand the federal railroad increase investment in its aging infrastructure.
The power issues have continued, however, with multiple outages along the same stretch of track through the New Jersey Meadowlands.
The two railroads said in June that they would be conducting more frequent inspections of both power lines and the train pantographs that collect traction power.
The power issues go beyond just the overhead wires, however — in September, at least four trains were stranded between the Meadowlands and Penn Station when a 1932-vintage substation in North Bergen, N.J., went down for 40 minutes.
