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Long Island Rail Road officials said a normal morning rush-hour commute was anticipated today, though workers struggled last night to clear a derailed train car from the tracks in Jamaica, where it collided with another train late yesterday morning.
At Jamaica, a crane lifted the derailed train back onto the tracks, and it was towed to a repair facility shortly after 10 p.m. LIRR spokesman Joe Calderone said scores of workers planned to work overnight. Tracks also were damaged in the accident, but the extent of the damage could not be determined until the car was moved, he said.
No injuries were reported and the cause of the collision was under investigation. One of the passenger cars was passing over a switch, a mechanism controlled in towers near the station that allows trains to transfer between tracks, at the time of the accident, Calderone said.
LIRR officials were working to get information from a data recorder, similar to the "black box" found on airplanes, to learn more about how and why the accident occurred. The speed of the trains at the time of the accident was unavailable, but Calderone said a 15 mph speed limit is in effect at the station.
At Penn Station and Jamaica during the evening rush, riders shuttled onto different trains after the LIRR canceled 11 eastbound trains that normally run between 4 and 6:30 p.m.
Announcements every minute or two at Penn Station caused passengers - some in high heels - to sprint for their track numbers, and LIRR employees wearing bright orange vests held thick schedules with modified train times.
Richard Thibodeau, 43, of Merrick, said he had just sent an e-mail message to his wife, who usually commutes home with him, to her BlackBerry, saying that he could not save her a seat.
"My 40-minute train will now take an-hour-and-a-half," said the operations manager for the insurance giant AIG. "It's the aggravation, it's the extra half-hour you don't plan on."
Others were more serene. "You take it in stride," said Justin Manger, 36, of Bellmore, who owns an executive search company in Manhattan. "It stinks, but it doesn't happen often and you deal with it."
At the Jamaica station, Susan Rhodes, 61, of Floral Park, a real estate agent in Brooklyn, was among the lucky ones: She was delayed just six minutes after connecting there from Flatbush Avenue.
"Hopefully this is my train," she said as one pulled in at 5 p.m. Noticing a familiar conductor, she checked to make sure the train was the one she wanted and stepped in. Within another minute, she was off.
The accident, which Fire Department spokesman Chris Villarroel described as a "minor, low-impact collision," occurred just west of the platform at Jamaica station at about 10 a.m. The second-to-last car on a Hempstead-bound train that left Flatbush Avenue at 9:35 a.m. derailed and struck the last car of a 9:34 a.m. train from Penn Station to Huntington.
Of the 290 passengers on the two trains, the fire department said it evaluated 20 passengers for injuries and found none. Calderone said there were 150 passengers on the Hempstead train and 140 on the Huntington train.
Nineteen passengers were evacuated from the last two cars of the Hempstead train, which were not aligned with the platform, Calderone said. There were no passengers in the last car of the Huntington train, he said.
The Federal Railroad Administration confirmed it had investigators on the scene and would investigate.
Late yesterday afternoon, some 40 LIRR employees in orange vests were on the tracks near the Jamaica station looking at the derailed train and the track area surrounding it. A long scrape could be seen on the side of the train car that was struck by the car that derailed.
The M-7 electric cars, which are self-insured by the LIRR, cost about $2.2 million apiece, railroad spokesman Salvatore Arena said.
On the platforms, LIRR employees, some with bullhorns, answered customers' questions and made announcements about train schedules.
LIRR derailment
Huntington-bound train, 12 cars, 140 passengers; last 2 cars do not platform.
Hempstead-bound train, 6 cars, 150 passengers
Ten cars of a 12-car Huntington train are platformed at Jamaica.
Arriving Hempstead train nears a switcher west of station.
Next-to-last car of Hempstead train derails, bumping last (unplatformed) car of Huntington train. Last car follows derailed car.
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