(The Associated Press distributed the following article on August 20.)
WASHINGTON — Commuter rail traffic in the Washington area and Amtrak trains in the Southeast slowly returned to normal Wednesday afternoon following a signaling failure at CSX Corp. that the freight carrier blamed on a computer virus.
The virus infected the computer system at CSX’s Jacksonville, Fla., headquarters, shutting down signaling, dispatching and other systems at about 1:15 a.m., CSX spokesman Adam Hollingsworth said.
“The cause was believed to be a worm virus similar to those that have infected the systems of other major companies and agencies in recent days,” Mr. Hollingsworth said.
The signal outage briefly affected the entire CSX system, which covers 23 states east of the Mississippi River. CSX will work to protect its computer systems from further intrusion, Mr. Hollingsworth said.
Although the problem had been largely corrected Wednesday afternoon, there were some residual delays in Amtrak service from Washington to Richmond, Va., and points south, Amtrak spokesman Dan Stessel said. “Most of the delays are in the 15 to 30-minute range on trains that travel through CSX territory,” he said.
MARC service in Maryland was back to normal for the afternoon commute on the Camden Line, which runs on CSX tracks from Washington to Camden Station in Baltimore, spokesman Richard Scher said.
However, the transit system canceled three of the 10 trains on the Brunswick line, which runs from Washington to Brunswick, Md., and Martinsburg, W. Va., with a spur to Frederick, Md. Commuters used buses to connect from Point of Rocks, Md., to Frederick.
The Penn Line, which runs on Amtrak tracks from Washington to Penn Station in Baltimore wasn’t affected by the CSX outage.
Virginia Railway Express, which runs from Washington to Fredericksburg and Manassas, Va., expected no afternoon delays because of the CSX problem, spokesman Mark Roeber said. One train was canceled because of a crew problem, he said.
Washington’s Metrorail system was honoring MARC and VRE tickets Wednesday afternoon for commuters who had to drive to Metro stations because their morning trains were canceled, Metro spokesman Steven Taubenkibel said.