Piece of Metal Pierces Roof of New Jersey Transit Train in a Night of Service Disruptions

It was supposed to be an 18-minute ride to New York’s Pennsylvania Station after a night out in Newark, New Jersey, but not long after the New Jersey Transit train carrying John Foley and 1,100 other passengers entered a Hudson River tunnel, the lights flickered and it felt like the train might fly off the tracks.

“There were electrical explosions and sparks. People braced themselves because it felt like the train was freewheeling through the tunnel,” Foley, 40, of Manhattan, said Saturday.

Transit officials said overhead electrical wiring dislodged around 11:30 p.m. Friday, causing a piece of a metal bracket, connecting the train to the overhead power line, to puncture a passenger car of the Northeast Corridor train that Foley was in. About 3 to 4 feet of metal protruded into the car.

A few minutes later, a North Jersey Coast Line train with 500 passengers traveling from Penn Station to New Jersey struck a metal object hanging in overhead wiring as it exited the tunnel.

Both trains lost electricity, but no injuries were reported, Jim Smith, a spokesman for New Jersey Transit, said.

Service in and out of Penn Station was suspended for almost nine hours and was not restored until 8:45 a.m. Saturday.

Passengers said the episodes left them rattled as some cars filled with smoke and the acrid smell of an electrical fire.

“When we saw the sparks and the train started shaking, the first thing that came to mind was all the Amtrak accidents that have happened,” said Kate Brick, 35, a director at a nonprofit who lives in Brooklyn.

Brick was on the train headed into Penn Station after attending a soccer match at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

“We ducked for cover because it was really, really terrifying,” she said.

After the train ground to a halt, Brick, who was traveling with Beckie Bintrim, 32, of New York City, surveyed their surroundings.

A piece of metal had punctured but not penetrated the car they were in. They saw windows blown out on some cars. Two cars behind them, a piece of metal punctured the roof of the train.

Brick said: “It was hard not to think about how lucky we were. If it was rush hour, someone would have been standing in the aisle.”

Bintrim added, “It should be a wake-up call that there are serious issues with the transit system.”

New Jersey Transit is in a well-documented state of crisis. It suffers from aging tracks and trains. The 100-year-old tunnel through which trains move between New York and New Jersey is crumbling and in desperate need of repair.

Plans for a new Hudson River tunnel, often referred to as one of the most critical infrastructure projects in the country, have been scuttled over the past few years by the former Republican governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, and President Donald Trump, a New Yorker.

Most recently, New Jersey Transit has struggled with delays and cancellations because it did not replace engineers who retired or left the agency fast enough, officials have said.

Amtrak, which owns and operates the tunnels, could not explain what went wrong Friday. “We don’t have a cause yet,” Christina E. Leeds, an Amtrak spokeswoman, said Saturday.

Kevin Corbett, executive director of New Jersey Transit, said, “We remain in close contact with Amtrak as part of the ongoing investigation to determine the exact cause of the incident.”

Smith, the agency spokesman, said it was clear the catenary wires had become dislodged and a metal bracket punctured the car.

“The reason the wire dislodged is under investigation,” he said. “It’s like which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

Passengers on the train headed into Penn Station said New Jersey Transit staff members were communicative but it took about 90 minutes for a rescue train to arrive.

The cars were without air conditioning after losing power and were filled with more passengers than normal because people had moved from the back of the train to the front to escape smoky conditions.

A rescue locomotive sent from Newark brought the New Jersey-bound train that struck a piece of metal to the Secaucus Junction station in Secaucus, New Jersey, at about 1:45 a.m., where passengers transferred to connecting trains. Transit officials said a crew had to remove the damaged wire to allow access for the rescue vehicle.

“This was yet another example of the terrible things that happen when you don’t take care of the transit system,” Brick said. “What are we waiting for? What’s it going to take to fix the system?”