(The following story by Lisa Coryell appeared on the Trenton Times website on January 18.)
HAMILTON, N.J. — An NJ Transit train traveling from Trenton to New York City derailed a mile short of the Hamilton station yesterday, forcing about 100 passengers to evacuate.
No one was hurt in the incident, which occurred around 11:38 a.m., roughly three minutes after the 12-car train left Trenton.
“This derailment was minor, akin to a car getting a flat tire,” said Joe Dee, NJ Transit spokesman. “You pull over and fix it and move on.”
Dee said agency investigators are trying to determine what caused the derailment.
No passengers were traveling in the affected car, Dee said. Once the train stopped, passengers were moved to a Trenton-bound train on an adjacent track. Back in Trenton, passengers boarded another train to New York City, he said.
While southbound service into Trenton continued on schedule throughout the afternoon, northbound service out of the Hamilton and Princeton Junction stations was suspended for several hours. Travelers from those stations had to ride the rails to Trenton to board northbound trains.
Many at the stations waited in the cold, some more patiently than others, wondering why they had to go to Trenton to catch a train to New York. Few knew about the derailed train.
Some chose to skip Trenton altogether and drive.
Bruce Schiller of Mount Holly thought he missed his train. Schiller, who works as a technician for CBS in New York, was at the Princeton Junction station to catch the 1:17 p.m. train, but had to wait for the 1:41 p.m. instead.
“It doesn’t matter to me, I’ll just be a little late,” said Schiller.
“When you commute every day, you’d die of a heart attack if you worried about being late every day,” he said.
Over at the Hamilton station, a bundled up Maria Lopez, who works as a nurse at the Elizabeth Seton Pediatric Center in New York, was not as concerned about being late as she was about what that would mean for her paycheck.
“I’m gonna get docked, which is worse,” said Lopez.
Kathy, of South Jersey, figured something was wrong when she saw a helicopter hovering over the station.
Kathy, who did not want to give her last name, said she had an appointment in New York, and did not want to take the risk of taking a train to Trenton and getting stuck there. She said she did not see any trains coming from the other direction, and thought it would be best to drive. As she prepared to walk away, a train heading north whizzed by.
“I guess I was wrong,” she said.
Carmen Dell, who lives in New York but works in Princeton, said she usually takes the train home later in the afternoon. Dell said the commute is “normally not this bad. This doesn’t happen very often.”
Dell had been waiting at Princeton Junction for about a half hour before her train came.
“Normally I read. Today would be the day I would not have my book,” said Dell.
(Staff writer Eva Loayza contributed to this story.)