NEW YORK — Amtrak service between New York and Boston was restored early today after overhead power issues halted operation between the two cities much of Wednesday evening.
Amtrak announced that service was being halted in a social media post shortly after 7 p.m. ET and said that service had been restored in another post about 1:30 a.m., cautioning that some residual delays were anticipated.
During the outage, passengers traveling between New York and New Haven, Conn., had their tickets honored on Metro-North trains. Others were able to rebook another day at no charge or receive a full refund.
Even with the restored operations, a number of trains were cancelled this morning because equipment unavailability. These include southbound Acelas 2109 (an 8 a.m. train from New York to Washington), 2159 (a 9:10 a.m. departure from Boston for Washington), and 2171 (a 3:10 departure from Boston to Washington). Northbound cancellations included Acelas 2150 (Washington to Boston, departing at 4:54 a.m.), 2166 (Washington to Boston, departing at 12:55 p.m.), and 2124 (Washington to New York, departing at 6:30 p.m.).
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What caused the failure? Was it Amtrak or was it the utility feed to Amtrak? with the storm recovery it might have been the utility limiting power usage by Amtrak? This is an example of when the AIROs could operate some regionals unless the signal system was also compromised. Did SLE operate? Also, MBTA to Providence? That could indicate where the problems happened.
I don’t expect TRAINS to have a full picture this early, but I’d like to have a full picture. If Metro North could operate to New Haven, why couldn’t Amtrak. The two carriers use different stations in New York, so the one doesn’t completely substitute for the other.
We need more info.
Speaking of Amtrak and the corridor, what Is the status of the new Acela trains? How many are running and how fast will these new rains supersede the old? No news is bad news.