Harlem Line suspended due to flooding 6/29

Flooding knocked out some of the Harlem Line tonight- maintainers on the scene at Cleveland Street in Valhalla said that the damage was confined to a two mile area up to Hawthorne. Maintainers said the railroad suffered a few washouts that had to be repaired. Bus shuttles were run around the affected area, bringing customers to Chappaqua to continue their journey north. In Valhalla, nearby parking lots had flooded as water came pouring down from the hillsides, over the railroad, and overflowing the banks of the waterways that border the Bronx River Parkway.

How bad was flooding in valhalla? I know the guy that owns the auto shop across from the train station...

there were cars in the n white plains lot that were windshield deep under water.

Sorry. MNRR made a bad situation (out of their control) worse last night for 1000's of commuters.

MNRR knew that they couldn't run past NWP so why the h**L didn't they tell us at GCT???? Instead they stranded us in Mount Vernon, White Plains, et al for hours. They let us all get on the trains like nothing was wrong, knowing we'd be lucky to get out of the Bronx.

Some of us could have taken alternate routes (say the Danbury or Hudson line) home last night instead of having a 75 minute ride turn into a 4 hour fiasco.

Simple communication, is that too much to ask??

MNCR did not start holding trains in GCT till about 18:20, after my train,1868, last thru train to Danbury left.
The Hudson had one track out and was severly short of equipment due to track outages.

PutnamJct wrote:Some of us could have taken alternate routes (say the Danbury or Hudson line) home last night instead of having a 75 minute ride turn into a 4 hour fiasco.

4 hours! Boy, you were lucky. I was on the 5:19. I got home at 10:45 and there were still hundreds of people behind me when I got on a bus at NWP. After this bus made it to Chappaqua and we got on the train it left the station.

It seemed like there were only two train sets north of Chappaqua at the time. I only saw one set heading south as we were going north and there weren't any working sets in the Brewster Yard.

I dont think anyone was expecting floods- especially the kinds of floods we had on the Harlem Line. What exactly did you want Metro-North to plan for? I'm sure as soon as there was a problem, MN scrambled to hire busses- these busses had to travel the same clogged roads that everyone else was travelling to get where they were going, so there were bound to be delays.

When the railroad gets knocked out and they do the shuttle between Chappaqua-Southeast, what is the procedure? Where does the equipment and crews come from?

-otto-

They should've ran shuttle buses NWP & Hawthrone, stopping at Vahalla & Mt. Pleasant, then they should've ran their north-of-southeast equipment between Hawthrone & Wassiac, even though there will be long headways, it would've been better than no service

I was lucky to get picked up a NWP by my dad. Still I was on the 5:46 and I know that long before we were held in Mt. Vernon the problem
was known. I was told to change trains, to the north bound local. I was lucky. My commute only totalled 3 hours , door to door.

Nothing was moving in the area. All of the roads between NWP and Chappaqua were flooded; saw mill, TSP RT 9a RT100 nothing could move until the water went down. The last time we had any flooding like this was Hurricane Floyd. The storms stayed in one area and drop their water. 3 inches plus in a short period of time has nowhere to go no matter where you live

I was on NY 119, US 9, 287, the Saw Mill, NY 100, NY 100c, NY 9a, the Bronx River Parkway... everything was locked up in every direction- especially as local municipalities had nearly every entrance blocked off due to flooding and other issues...

Did North White Plains station burn too?

-otto-

Otto Vondrak wrote:I dont think anyone was expecting floods- especially the kinds of floods we had on the Harlem Line. What exactly did you want Metro-North to plan for?

-otto-

I know you can't plan for the weather. My gripe is that they (MNRR) knew there was a problem at Valhalla long before they actually stopped sending trains out of GCT. Why stack everyone up and down the line and not tell them what's going on? I was actually told to get off the train (while at MVW), go back to Fordam and see if I could get something to Danbury......

My point is that they should have told us sooner that there was a very good chance that we weren't getting past NWP BEFORE we got on the trains.....

I dont think the railroad intentionally sent a thousand people to NWP for no reason. I dont think anyone realized how bad the damage was anywhere until the trains got to NWP and they realized the bus shuttle system was not going to work the way they planned. I dont know, I wasn't on the train and I dont work for the railroad, so I'm just playing devil's advocate right now.

I heard reports there was a fire at NWP station that may have compounded the problems?

-otto-

I guess I was lucky missing the 5:59 by a few seconds. I was waiting for the 6:29 to leave when the announcement was made about service being suspended. Had I heard something before the last through train to Danbury left I could have caught that and asked the kind engineer for a ride home since he lives down the street from me. Ended up going to Hastings to get a ride home with by brother. It took about two hours to get to Southeast. At least my train was pacing CP-505 through Riverdale and Yonkers.

[ed. Note: CP #505 is now CP/D&H #417, the tri-weekly NB freight]

Otto Vondrak wrote:I heard reports there was a fire at NWP station that may have compounded the problems?

I didn't see a fire, but the lower level of NWP station was flooded.
I did see some Fire dept personnel there helping with traffic movement.

I think the biggest problem with the buses was a lack of drivers. The drivers probably couldn't get to the depot because of the flooding.