Disabled NJ Transit commuter train New York City is cleared but causes residual delays

A New Jersey Transit commuter train was removed Tuesday after becoming disabled just outside the Hudson River tunnel in New York City and delaying trains for commuters throughout the Northeast.

The Northeast Corridor train, carrying about 1,000 passengers, was scheduled to arrive at Penn Station at 8:39 a.m. but broke down near 10th Avenue, said NJ Transit spokesman William Smith.

The train was removed just before 10 a.m. The cause of the mechanical problem was not immediately known.

Five trains on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor line were delayed 20 to 30 minutes in and out of Penn Station as a result of the disabled train, an Amtrak spokesman said. It also caused delays on New Jersey Transit's Northeast Corridor, North Jersey Coast, Raritan Valley, Morris & Essex and Montclair-Boonton line trains in and out of New York's Penn Station.

As a result, Brenda and Barry Hide, who were visiting New York from Toronto, had to wait about 15 minutes for a train to Newark Liberty Airport.

"So long as we make our flight," said Barry Hide.

The couple gave themselves plenty of time to make the 1 p.m. flight because "we didn't really know how long it would take us," his wife added.

But Brooklyn resident Evelyn Clarke, who was on her way to visit her mother at a nursing home in Ewing, New Jersey, said she was upset.

"This cuts into my time to spend with her," she said, adding that she visits her mother once a week.