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The long trip home


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#1 KevinKorell

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Posted 16 January 2006 - 01:39 AM

You may recall that following our fest last winter in the New York-New Jersey area, Michael and I ran into a situation on NJ TRANSIT's North Jersey Coast Line in which some catenary wires had come down, necessitating bustitution between Little Silver and Long Branch. Our group had dodged that bullet, having been through there hours before. This year, some of our participants had quite an adventure getting home from an otherwise fun and educational day on the rails. Skip Howard was on his way home to Massachusetts from OTOL Big Apple RailFest 2006 Sunday evening. On the same train was fellow participant Steve Weagant, who had flown in from Chicago for the fest but was riding Acela up and down the East Coast on his own. The two were aboard Train #2256 on their way to Boston when the Acela broke down due to problems with the brakes. Their train restarted for a bit but ultimately could not go on. Around Niantic, CT, The train finally was deemed unable to carry its passengers onward. A decision was made to transfer passengers to Regional train #194, which itself was running very late. 194 was brought up next to 2256, and passengers were transferred in the biting cold and wind over a single bridge plate through a doorway in the Acela's cafe car. While Skip was telling me this by phone, the abandoned Acela passed by their Regional! Skip and Steve seemed upbeat about their adventure, but I sure hope both will seek the refund they are due. Meanwhile, Nick Gibbon ran into trouble going south. He was taking the traditional NJ TRANSIT/SEPTA route home via a transfer in Trenton. The NJT train was late into TRE, and the SEPTA train did not wait for it. Nick ended up spending more time in New Jersey, taking the RiverLINE and PATCO via Camden back to his home in Philadelphia. After the group broke up at Penn Station's Track 21, Michael and I went to purchase NJT tickets for a short trip to Newark. I already had Newark-Metropark tickets, but we had to stop in Newark since I had left my suitcase with the bell captain at the Gateway Hilton next door. Since the NJT train that Nick had boarded had already left, we had to wait around the NJT concourse of NY Penn Station until 5:01. Due to heavy boarding, this train did not get out of NYP until 5:09. Problem was, I only had 14 minutes by the timetable to get our suitcase and return to Newark Penn for the next train. With the 8-minute delay, that window was reduced to 6 minutes. I left Michael upstairs at Tracks 3 & 4 of Newark Penn with my bag while I ran across Raymond Plaza outsite (using the sky bridge would have taken too long -- unnecessary escalator trips) dodging a couple of SUV's that in typical New Jersey fashion did not honor the pedestrian (me) in the marked crosswalk. Somehow, I made it back, and we made our second NJT train, which took us back to Metropark and my car. Incidentally, the first train was so crowded that the crew did not get a chance to lift our NYP-NWK tickets, the ones we had taken the time to purchase in New York.


Kevin Korell


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Lakewood, NJ


#2 Skip Howard

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Posted 16 January 2006 - 07:56 PM

The mechanical difficulty was that the cold (14F) had frozen the one the compressors and the other evidently could not maintain sufficient air pressure without shutting down the toilets and water. Once the hotel equipment was shut down the compressor wa sable to maintain sufficient air pressure for the brakes. The engineer outlaewd at PVD so we had a twenty minute wait for a new engineer. Arrival at RTE was 10:59. The crossover to #194 was quite easy about a ten foot walk on the portable bridge.
Skip Howard
South Easton, Mass.

#3 jis

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Posted 19 January 2006 - 02:45 PM

My ride on PATH to Hoboken and then on an M&E Gladstone train (the usual 3 car Arrow III consist) was completely uneventful. Made it into Short Hills a few minutes early. Why go to Hoboken you say? I had a return half of an off-peak round trip ticket from Hoboken to Short Hills purchased the previous day, to use up, and having missed the previos hour's Midtown Direct, this also got me home 10 minutes earlier :) BTW, I topped off the Railfest long weekend by taking a ride from GCT out to Wassaic and back on Monday. The previous weekend I had done Hoboken to Port Jervis Saturday and GCT to Poughkeepsie on Sunday.

Edited by jis, 19 January 2006 - 03:03 PM.


#4 steve4031

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Posted 14 February 2006 - 10:15 PM

Overall, I thought Amtrak handled this situation pretty well. I hated gettinf off of the Acleal and onto an Amfleet train. But it could have been much worse. I had visiions of a two or three hour delay . . . and I think my over all delay was about 1 hour 30 minutes. The decision to switch us to 194 occurred within 30 minutes of the second stop of the Acela, and the transfer to 194 anc continuation of the trip was achieved in about 1 hr 15 minutes. We had an additional delay at Providence waiting for a crew since the current one had "died". This was only about 10 minutes or so, so again, I was not to annoyed. It could be argued that better maintainance would have prevented the problem, but hey, stuff happens sometimes. Amtrak never men tioned the possibility of a refund, Nor did I seek it. My ride on the Acela from Boston to Washington and back to Newark was enjoyable, and uneventful. I more detailed report will follow.




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