NEW YORK CITY — Metro-North Railroad and Amtrak were set to resume limited service between New York and New Haven Tuesday afternoon following last week's train collision, with regular service beginning Wednesday, officials said.
Dozens of people were hurt last Friday evening when one Metro-North train derailed and struck an oncoming train just north of Bridgeport, Conn., witnesses said.
One of the two damaged tracks had been rebuilt as of Tuesday afternoon and will be back in service about 3 p.m. with a train departing from Grand Central Station. Trains will temporarily share the same track in both directions for 7 miles around Bridgeport and will run at reduced speeds of 30 miles per hour, which could result in delays, the MTA said in a press release.
“Although reconstruction and testing of the second track will not be completed until late Tuesday night, enough work has been completed to allow us to operate this limited service in advance of resuming our regular schedule on Wednesday,” Metro-North President Howard Permut said in a statement.
Metro-North planned to operate about half of their regular eastbound peak service from Grand Central and regular hourly westbound service from New Haven Tuesday afternoon and evening, according to a press release. Metro-North was already running a regular schedule between Grand Central and South Norwalk in both directions.
Amtrak also planned to start running trains on the rebuilt tracks Tuesday, with a New York-bound Acela train leaving Boston at 3:15 p.m. and a Boston-bound Acela train leaving New York at 4 p.m., officials said.
