Huge outage strands thousands on Amtrak

NEWARK -- A massive power outage on Amtrak's busiest corridor yesterday stranded tens of thousands of passengers for hours in hot, smelly cars -- some in tunnels under the Hudson River -- in the latest of several recent embarrassments for the perpetually money-losing railroad.

The cause of the outage, which created widespread disruptions from Washington to Boston, had not been determined by mid afternoon yesterday.

Power was lost about 8:15 and was out for nearly three hours, affecting not only the nation's federally subsidized passenger railroad but also commuter lines in New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Many passengers simply got out of stuck rail cars and walked to the next station.

``I'm going to take a long, hard look at the Delta shuttle next time," said Jeff Oppenheim, a New York actor and director who was stuck for more than three hours in a dark, sweltering tunnel outside New York's Penn Station on his way to a meeting in Washington.

On the New England line, a number of trains linking Boston and New York were canceled or delayed, Amtrak spokesman Clifford Black said. The total number of missed trips, both those leaving New York for Boston and leaving Boston for New York, was unknown late yesterday.

Many trains headed to New York from Boston were held at New Haven or Stamford in Connecticut. In some cases, Black said, Boston passengers then transferred to crowded Metro North commuter trains, which run into New York on a separate power system from Amtrak.

Kevin Greene, who works at the concierge desk in the lobby of South Station, said that despite the cancellations, the scene at the station was never chaotic.

Amtrak officials were reviewing electronic logs to identify the sequence of events to determine what happened, said Amtrak's acting president, David Hughes.

``It doesn't appear that there was any major physical failure, but something tripped, and there was some sequence of events and a protective system shut everything down," Hughes said.

Hughes did not know how many Amtrak trains were affected. On a typical day, Amtrak operates 97 train departures between New York and Washington and 42 departures between New York and Boston.

Thirteen NJ Transit trains also were stopped dead on the tracks by the outage, along with 28 trains in Philadelphia, and eight on Maryland's system.

Passengers stuck on trains described rapidly worsening conditions as the outage dragged on. ``When you l ose the power, you lose all the flushes, too," said Oppenheim, who was stuck aboard an Acela train.

The outage prompted cries for changes in the management of Amtrak, which has been without a permanent president since David Gunn was fired in November.

Amtrak has debt of more than $3.5 billion and its operating loss for 2005 topped $550 million. It has never turned a profit in its 35 years of existence. The railroad has had a host of problems in the last year.

In April 2005, Amtrak had to cancel its Acela Express service because of brake problems with the high-speed trains that carry passengers between Washington, New York, and Boston. Full service was not restored until September.

Mac Daniel of the Globe staff and correspondent Liz Raftery contributed to this report from Boston.