Train #3965- Wednesday Evening 8/18/2004

Why the massive delay just before Princeton Junction this evening?

according to NJ Transit's site, it seems two trains were canceled for some reason.

All eastbound NEC trains are operating on or close to schedule departing Trenton. All westbound NEC trains operating 15-20 minute delays arriving into Trenton.

Northeast Corridor #3985 Cancelled. Passengers to #3885.

I came home on #3865 today. Conductor made an annoucement between PJ and Hamilton apologizing for the slow train speed but that there were "switch problems" in Trenton, delaying all of the trains. We arrive in Hamilton around 6:41, 8 minutes late.

I guess the problem got worse as the night wore on...

I heard that control of "HAM" interlocking was lost by CTEC 7. There were no signals and no switches down there at all. Trains were forced to run at restricted speed from PJ to Trenton. Im not sure if there were troubles at "FAIR" interlocking at Trenton station or not. There are many quick and tight equipment and crew turns in Trenton and NYP, so when things get screwy somewhere, there is quite quickly a shortage of crews, equipment or both because of the such tight turns.

This is what I was told and overheard tonight - I was quite happy to be on the Coast LIne tonight!!!

Were there still problems this morning? I took #3826 this morning, and it was about 8 minutes late getting in. By the time we got to NYP, we were 11 minutes behind schedule.

I was on AMTRAK # 189, which expresses through Trenton station about 6pm. Yesterday, we operated slow on track #3 all the way from PJ to the Trenton Bridge.

We were fortunate in that we were not forced to stop. There were three NJT Trains stalled on track #4 outside of Trenton Station with a Clocker stuck between them......it looks like there was one AMTRAK train and one NJT train also stalled north of Trenton station on the New York bound tracks........