MANHATTAN — Subway service on the N, Q and R lines was snarled by two broken subway rails during the Tuesday rush, the MTA said.
N and Q trains stopped running between Queens and Manhattan for over three hours after a routine maintenance check found rail defects in the southbound tracks near both the 5th Avenue-59th Street and Queensboro Plaza stations at 2:37 p.m., the MTA said.
The rails failed to meet "very finite, small measurements," MTA spokeswoman Amanda Kwan said.
N and Q trains began running normally between Manhattan and Queens around 6:10 p.m. The defects had halted N service between 57 Street-7 Avenue and Astoria-Ditmars Boulevard and Q service between Times Square-42 Street and Astoria-Ditmars Boulevard.
Southbound N trains are running on the R line between Canal Street and Dekalb Avenue while southbound R trains run on the F line between 36 Street in Queens and W 4 Street-Washington Square and then on the D line to DeKalb Avenue.
Northbound R service was running as normal, Kwan said.
Customers should take other trains, like the E, F or 7, and expect delays and overcrowding, especially on the B,D and F trains, Kwan said.
Meanwhile, A trains are running with delays in both directions because of switch problems at Rockaway Boulevard.
On Monday morning, 7 trains weren't running between Queensboro Plaza and 34 Street-Hudson Yards due to a broken rail at the Hunters Point Avenue station.
"These things happen all the time in our system," Kwan told DNAInfo of the defected rails. "It's the wear and tear on the tracks."
