Some riders say they feel Metro-North did its best with the situation, while others say passengers were left uninformed and stranded.
Advertisement
Metro-North will be back with full service in time for Friday morning’s rush hour, MTA officials said Thursday evening. The trains were only at 83 percent capacity, with scores of commuters choosing to stay home or travel by auto, according to a railroad spokeswoman.
The fire underneath the viaduct caused structural damage to one steel supporting column and three adjacent horizontal steel girders that run east-west along the width of the underside of the viaduct and are known in engineering terminology as floor beam stringers, according to Metro-North.
Passengers board a Metro-North train at Grand Central Terminal, Wednesday, May 18, 2016, in NY. It said crews were installing six temporary steel columns at the site. Fire marshals determined that the blaze fire was accidental, caused by fuel spilled while refueling a generator at the Urban Garden Center.
The garden center’s storage area – between East 117th and 118th streets – was the holding area for the bulk of the business’s fertilizers, firewood, soil and additional gardening chemicals which officials say fueled the fire. Once in place, the seven columns, braced together, will function as a single structure that will bear the weight of the overhead viaduct until permanent repairs can be put in place. The conductor announced that another train behind would make all local stops.
Final repairs are expected to be made in the coming days. On Wednesday, packed trains were delayed up to an hour and a half.
“I went to New York City yesterday, yesterday afternoon”. Its main lines – the Hudson, Harlem, and New Haven – run northward out of Grand Central Terminal, a Beaux-Arts Manhattan landmark, into suburban NY and CT.
Advertisement
“Chaos tonight”, predicted Lisa Bucci of Norwalk, Connecticut, as her train crawled into the station, doubling her morning commute to more than two hours.
