RUTLAND, Vt. — Seventy-six passengers on a Rutland train bound for New York City spent more than four hours shivering after the engine broke down Thursday outside Whitehall, N.Y., the Rutland Herald reported.
“They were stuck there for hours without heat,” said Robert Theil of Weston, whose son was on the train and called him from a cellular phone. “It’s ridiculous. We’re not in the Yukon.”
Amtrak train 294, the Ethan Allen Express, left Rutland at 9 a.m. and sustained an engine failure at around 10:30 a.m., according to Amtrak spokesman Dan Stessel.
“The crew was unable to correct the problem,” he said. “During that time there wasn’t much on that train except emergency power, so the heat would have been off. If there were blankets, the crew would have provided them, and the café car would have been open to serve what they could serve.”
Stessel said an emergency engine was sent from New York City to tow the stuck train, which arrived shortly after 3 p.m. to pull train 294 the rest of the way to Albany, N.Y.
Stessel said the train arrived at 5:10 p.m. in Albany, where passengers switched trains. He said the group finally arrived at Penn Station in New York City at 8:21 p.m. Thursday.
Stessel said such engine problems don’t happen often.
“On long-distance trains we usually have a backup engine,” he said. “Elsewhere, it usually doesn’t take this long to get a rescue engine to the train. The delay was more due to where it died in relation to the nearest hub.”
Stessel said Amtrak generally does something to make it up to passengers after such a fiasco.
“I would imagine they will receive a travel voucher of some sort for future travel on Amtrak,” he said.
Theil said he was worried about getting his son, Mark, who lives in New York City, to come visit him again in the future.
“Whether I’ll ever get him on a train to Vermont again, God only knows,” he said.