(The following article by Rona Kobell and Stephanie Desmon was posted on the Baltimore Sun website on November 18.)
BALTIMORE — Thousands of commuters waited in long lines and crowded onto packed trains yesterday after MARC service on the Penn Line between Washington and Baltimore was canceled because an empty coal train derailed near Bowie, knocking out power to the major commuting corridor.
MARC officials said they hoped service will resume by the Monday morning rush, but a decision won’t be made until tomorrow night.
Three empty CSX Corp. coal cars derailed about 7:45 p.m. Thursday between Bowie and Landover, just hours after severe storms had ripped through the area. The derailed cars pulled down power lines and left debris on the tracks.
Many morning commuters learned of the derailment via e-mail from MARC and planned other routes, driving to Metro stations in New Carrollton and Greenbelt or to Camden Line stations such as the one at Oriole Park.
Some found space on Amtrak trains that honored MARC monthly passes.
Commuters shared stories of standing shoulder to shoulder in packed cars as the trains lurched into Washington about a half-hour behind schedule.
For some, the evening proved much more trying. With all rails leading to Washington’s Union Station, commuters mindful of the morning delays scrambled to arrive there before rush hour. At the station, they found long lines, harried Amtrak workers and plenty of frustrated fellow travelers.
Angela Bailey, a Harford County resident who works at the Department of Labor, was furious that Amtrak officials forced her to buy a $52 ticket to board a train home. Though she had paid $225 for a monthly commuting pass, she said Amtrak wouldn’t honor it.
“I understand they can’t accommodate everyone, but they should have been able to take a certain number of people with monthly passes,” said Bailey, who was one of the lucky ones who braved the crowd and got on the 3:30 p.m. train from Washington to Baltimore’s Penn Station.
“I know they’re frustrated, and you have angry customers, and that it’s Friday, and it’s close to Thanksgiving. But this wasn’t our fault. And the way they handled the situation was not good at all,” Bailey said.
Bailey was also frustrated with MARC, which had a banner of text on its Web site yesterday afternoon warning customers that they wouldn’t all be able to use the Camden Line. It gave no other options for getting home. And it hadn’t given her any ideas earlier in the day for how to get to her office – Bailey happened to remember that a commuter bus stopped near Route 40, so she took it to Camden Yards to catch a train.
“The MTA, they make tons and tons of money a year. I think they could at least tell people alternate ways to commute,” Bailey said.
Amtrak officials were honoring MARC monthly passes on a case-by-case basis where people were stranded, but they couldn’t open the floodgates because many Amtrak trains were already full, said Cliff Black, a spokesman.
The cause of the derailment was under investigation yesterday as workers labored to fix the power lines and clear the tracks.
“There’s a possibility that the weather had something to do with it,” said Frank Fulton, deputy director for MARC train/commuter bus service for the Maryland Transit Administration.
Said CSX spokesman Bob Sullivan: “We regret the inconvenience this has caused.”
Those who didn’t learn of the derailment until their arrival at the station yesterday morning found themselves navigating an expensive mix of cabs, buses and cars as they tried to get to their destinations on time.
Danielle Torain, a researcher in Washington who lives near Randallstown, usually catches a morning train from Halethorpe, but when she arrived yesterday, there was a sign telling her there would be no MARC train service until at least noon. She called her office and learned that the Penn Line would be canceled all day. About 10 a.m., she was at the Camden Yards station, trying to find a train to get her to work.
She found that the next train wouldn’t be leaving until 3:30 p.m. – leaving little of the work day to salvage.
“I have to get there,” said the 22-year-old. “I’ll just drive,” she finally decided.
At Penn Station, 23-year-old Yonatan Warren, a student at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, was typing away on his laptop. He had come in Thursday and spent the night with a friend in Baltimore. He was trying to get to College Park, where he was to give a sermon at Shabbat services at Hillel at the University of Maryland. He had planned to take the MARC train, which drops him off near campus.
Instead, he found out that he would have to take the more expensive Amtrak train, which wouldn’t take him directly to where he was going. He would then have to get on the Metro and then take a taxi.
The train he was waiting for was late and getting later. “When I first sat down, that train was delayed 30 minutes,” he said. “Every 20 minutes I sit here, it gets delayed another 10 minutes.”
About 90 minutes after he arrived at the station, the train was finally ready to be boarded.
In addition to knocking out power, Thursday’s derailment left one northbound Amtrak train stranded at the New Carrollton station. Its 421 passengers were given the option of getting on the Metro there. Most stayed on the train as a diesel locomotive was dispatched from Washington to pull it back to Union Station, said Karina Romero, an Amtrak spokeswoman.
The passengers were then taken by bus to Baltimore, where they could continue north, she said.
But there was no bus waiting for Supriya Janakiraman, a Johns Hopkins University graduate student who was on her way home to Glen Burnie on Thursday night aboard the 7:35 p.m. train from Union Station. After she had waited on the train for an hour, officials announced the derailment ahead and said the train would not be departing. So she split an $80 cab ride with two other stranded strangers.
While MARC officials were hoping that service could resume by the Monday morning rush, they were uncertain whether the tracks would be ready for trains. Amtrak officials will make that decision tomorrow night, and MARC will post updates to its Web site, www.mtamaryland.com.
Every weekday, about 15,000 commuters ride on the Penn Line, which runs hourly. A much smaller number, about 5,000, ride the Camden Line, which offers service only during the morning and evening rush hours.
Still, officials were relieved that the derailment occurred when it did – not in the middle of the commuter rush and not over the Thanksgiving holiday, one of the busiest times of the year for Amtrak.
“That’s a major East Coast thoroughfare,” Fulton said. “This presents a major bottleneck for them.”
Many MARC commuters took yesterday’s delays in stride, saying occasional problems are just a part of their commute. On hot summer days, the tracks occasionally overheat and service shuts down. And nine months ago, dozens of passengers were stuck on a train that was shut down for an electrical problem. That incident created a domino effect that led to major delays.
Many regular commuters said they prefer the MARC train to slogging through rush-hour Beltway traffic.
“I’ve traveled by MARC for nearly 10 years now, and this is probably the worst thing that’s happened,” said Glen Allen, a 70-year-old Bureau of Labor Statistics worker, as he boarded a train to Lanham at Union Station yesterday evening. “So I can’t give too much of a bad name to MARC.”