NEW YORK — According to the New York Times, the last rites for a stack of New York City subway cars destined for burial at sea were put off yesterday when a barge carrying the cars, known as Redbirds, was involved in an accident on the Harlem River, the authorities said.
Around noon, a tugboat that was moving the barge struck the Spuyten Duyvil railroad bridge where the Harlem meets the Hudson River. The accident disrupted Amtrak service to upstate New York, closed the Harlem River to recreational and commercial boat traffic and forced the barge to abort a trip to Delaware, where the subway cars are to serve as artificial reefs, the authorities said.
“They made it through the bridge, but they didn’t get to go to the reef in Delaware,” said Petty Officer Gary Rives, a spokesman for the United States Coast Guard, which is investigating the accident.
The authorities said last night that the Redbirds had been taken to a marine terminal in New Jersey operated by Weeks Marine Inc. of Cranford, N.J., which owns the tugboat involved in the accident.
Petty Officer Rives said the tugboat, the Shelby Weeks, was moving the barge under the railroad bridge when there was some sort of collision. He said the bridge, which rotates to allow river traffic to pass, was partly open at the time. Because of the damage, it could not be closed, he said. No one was hurt in the accident.
Karen Dunn, a spokeswoman for Amtrak, which owns the bridge, said the bridge was reopened shortly before 5:30 yesterday evening and train service was back to normal.
Before that, trains on Amtrak’s Empire line between Pennsylvania Station and upstate New York had to be rerouted. Just after the accident, passengers on a southbound Amtrak train on that line were transferred by bus to a Metro-North train and taken to Grand Central Terminal, Ms. Dunn said.
Until the bridge reopened, Empire Service trains were diverted around the bridge on Metro-North tracks to Grand Central. Several hundred passengers were shuttled between Grand Central and Penn Station by bus and taxi, Ms. Dunn said.