(The Philadelphia Inquirer posted the following article by Frederick Cusick on its website on July 22.)
PHILADELPHIA — A power failure on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor line affected thousands of Amtrak, SEPTA and NJ Transit riders during the rush hour last night.
The shutdown, which started shortly after 6 p.m., caused delays of up to 90 minutes, although the average delay on SEPTA trains lasted about 45 minutes, spokesman Gary Fairfax said.
Dan Stessel, a spokesman for Amtrak in Washington, said that the agency was still trying to determine the reason for the power loss. He said the Amtrak power gird went down about 6 p.m. and came up again about 6:45 p.m.
He said the outage directly reduced power to Amtrak trains as they passed through Chester City, Philadelphia and Bucks County, as well as trains between 30th Street Station and Paoli. However, he added, the shutdown’s impact was much greater because all trains coming into the area without power ultimately had to adjust their schedules.
To operate trains, power on the corridor usually must be between 15,000 and 25,000 volts. Last night, it dropped to about 9,000 volts in the Philadelphia portion of the corridor, Stessel said.
Fairfax said that all of SEPTA’s Regional Rail trains were affected by the power loss, with the R5 Paoli, the R7 Trenton, and the R6 Cynwyd trains having to be suspended for almost 90 minutes.
Passengers on one R5 train, stuck in West Philadelphia, eventually grew so fed up with the delay that they got off the train and walked to a SEPTA bus stop.
Penny Bassett Hackett, a spokeswoman for NJ Transit, said that trains between Dover, N.J., and New York City, were affected by the power failure. Hackett said about 10 trains were on the rails when the power shut down, while an additional 15 trains were held in New York’s Penn Station until power was restored.
She said that several thousand passengers were affected.
One rider, Alyssa White, who was stuck on the R5 to Paoli, said her train came to a halt just before Wayne before backing up to the St. Davids station. There, hundreds of passengers got off and were left to find other ways to complete their commute.
“There were lots of people out there using their cell phones,” she said, “and a huge line for the pay phones.”