(The following story by Uriah A. Kiser appeared on the News & Messenger website on July 8, 2010.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Virginia Railway Express passengers, bound for Manassas, got a ride home on an Amtrak train Wednesday after their locomotive broke down before leaving the station.
The locomotive on VRE train #337 stalled while sitting at Union Station, before it was supposed to depart the transit hub at 6:50 p.m., according to VRE spokesman Ryan Lang.
About 30 minutes later, after VRE officials scrambled to bring one of their locomotives back to Union Station to replace the disabled one, Amtrak officials agreed to let VRE passengers on train #337 board one of their trains which would take them to as far as Manassas.
Passengers bound for the last stop on VRE’s Manassas line, Broad Run, were told to get off of the Amtrak train at the VRE station in Old Town Manassas, where busses would be waiting to take them to Broad Run, said Lang.
The stalled locomotive comes one day after a woman, who refused to show a VRE train conductor a valid ticket, was forcibly removed from a train by Prince William police.
Just before 8 a.m. Tuesday, a Fredericksburg line VRE train stopped at the Quantico station when the woman be-came confrontational when asked to show the ticket, said a VRE spokesman.
The woman told the conductor that the ticket machines weren’t working at the station where she boarded the train. She also refused a free ticket offered to her by another passenger on board the train, which she could have used to avoid being thrown off of the commuter rail train, the commuter railroad spokesman said.
After the woman was removed about 30 minutes later, the train continued on to Washington without any further delays.
The woman was not charged, police said.