Regional rail services warned commuters to brace for possible delays Thursday morning following an evening power outage along a critical track through the Meadowlands.
NJ Transit told riders that delays and cancellations could arise Thursday “due to residual impacts resulting from crew availability and equipment that was out of position” following Wednesday night’s outage.
But a spokesman for Amtrak — the federal railway that operates the section of track where the outage occurred — said late Thursday morning that all service should be back to normal after crews worked through the night to repair the downed wires.
Train travel on the northeast corridor ground to a halt Wednesday evening after a signal wire came into contact with a power-transmission line in Kearny, N.J., Amtrak spokesman Jason Abrams told the Daily News.
The resulting power blowout shut down service into New York Penn Station for hours overnight.
The incident happened at the Swift interlocking, a rail junction just west of the Portal Bridge over the Hackensack River in the semitamed swamps of northern New Jersey.
A large-scale construction project is currently underway to replace the 114-year-old Portal Bridge, a known bottleneck on the Northeast Corridor.
That ongoing work is not thought to have contributed to Wednesday night’s outage, Abrams said.
NJ Transit listed possible delays on all but one line Thursday morning — the Atlantic City line in south Jersey connecting Philadelphia to the shore.
An NJ Transit spokeswoman said service was operating normally, but that trains could be slowed as both railroads recovered.
Riders on the five lines that run over the Northeast Corridor through the Meadowlands — the Montclair-Boonton, Morris & Essex, North Jersey Coast, Raritan Valley, and Trenton-bound lines — were warned of possible slowdowns as NJ Transit dealt with possible crew or equipment shortages.
The Garden State’s rail agency also warned of potential delays on the Main-Bergen County and Pascack Valley lines, despite those lines not running along the affected track.
