Penn Station fire damaged tunnel repaired; LIRR service should resume Saturday

The Penn Station tunnel damaged in a fire on Thursday is restored, a spokesman for Amtrak said Friday evening. Long Island Rail Road full service should resume at 5 a.m. on Saturday — if a strike does not happen.

On Friday afternoon, LIRR service to Penn Station remained limited, with trains leaving roughly every 30 minutes.

Though the MTA advised commuters to go to Grand Central Terminal — with the MTA honoring LIRR tickets for subway service — passengers gathered around a screen waiting for trains leaving Penn. 

An alert on the MTA app Friday afternoon said that trains between Jamaica and Penn Station were departing every half hour. On the train service screen in Penn it indicated whether trains were stopping at Jamaica where travelers could catch the Air Train with "JFK" and an airplane icon, or if the train would not stop at Jamaica.

An LIRR worker in an orange vest stood with a printout advising travelers when to expect the next train. Some people ran when their tracks were announced knowing that missing their train meant a long wait. 

"I am trying to get home," Howard Rubin, an attorney from Plainview said as he waited for a track announcement. "I'm told I can get the 3:20 to Ronkonkoma but they said I'm better off going to Grand Central."

If the LIRR workers go on strike, "It means I probably can't come into the office, or I have to drive into the office. Driving into the office is not a pleasant task and it takes a long time." 

"In this economy with everything going up in cost I thought the Long Island Rail Road was something you could rely on, evidently that's not the case," Rubin said.

On Friday morning, the LIRR's website listed "Reroute" as the status for all of its branches, with the following message: "There is extremely limited service to Penn Station this morning as Amtrak crews continue repair work following a fire near the terminal. There will be reroutes, cancellations, and delays. There is no eastbound service from Penn Station; use Grand Central or Atlantic Terminal instead. The Subway is cross-honoring LIRR tickets."

The LIRR cautioned riders to check their train's status before traveling.

A spokesman for Amtrak said the repairs are still ongoing, but did not provide an estimate of when the work would be finished and service restored. "Our crews are working hard around the clock to restore service in Lines 3 and 4 as quickly and safely as possible," Jason Abrams wrote in an email to Newsday on Friday morning.

Grand Central’s Madison Concourse will be accessible only via 1 Vanderbilt, 270 Park, the 42 St Shuttle corridor, and the 4, 5, and 6 subway staircases during the night and early morning hours.

Mineola native Yohan Maldonado, a security technician who works in Manhattan, said the Penn Station shutdown threw a wrench into his morning commute. But he’s taking it in stride and hoping for the best.

"I checked my MTA app when I woke up this morning and I saw no trains coming out — only Grand Central," he told Newsday at the Mineola station Friday morning. "Today is the first day we’re dealing with it. I don’t know how long repairs are going to take, but hopefully not long. We just got to take it day by day."

Maldonado said he woke up at 5:30 a.m. instead of 6 to give himself extra time to get into work. His plan was to ride to Grand Central and then "find a subway that will take me downtown efficiently and fast."

He believes the Penn Station shutdown is likely to impact fewer people on a Friday because of remote work, but told Newsday he doesn’t have that option.

"You just have to deal with it — don’t let it ruin your day," he said. "It’s Friday. I’m sure like 80% of the people who usually come are working remotely. Unfortunately, I can’t do that. So, I’m here."

A full-scale railroad shutdown in the event of a union strike would be more problematic for Maldonado, who said he has "no idea" how it would ultimately impact his commute if it extended into next week, but told Newsday "I’m sure it will affect it greatly."

He urged union and MTA leaders to "just come to the table, figure it out and shake hands, man."

"We don’t need none of this. We got people who need to commute to work, it’s going to affect people greatly," he told Newsday. "Just come together and do it for the greater good."

How the fire happened 

With a faint smell of smoke in the air Thursday, the 4:10 p.m. train on the Ronkonkoma Branch began boarding at Penn Station just after 3:50 p.m. on Thursday, hours after all Long Island Rail Road service had been suspended from the Manhattan station due to smoke in an East River tunnel.

An announcement on the loudspeaker just before 4 p.m. advised passengers to ride that train to Jamaica for all other destinations on Long Island. 

In a service update shortly after 8:30 p.m., the MTA said "most trains" were being diverted to and from Grand Central and that service would operate through the early morning hours, adding that the subway was cross-honoring LIRR tickets.

About 7 p.m., a Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokeswoman told Newsday: "Amtrak crews are working through the night to repair damage caused by the fire. ... As of now, the LIRR does not have a prediction for tomorrow morning's rush hour. The latest information can be found on mta.info."

John McCarthy, chief of policy and external relations for the MTA, said, "There will definitely be impacts" on the LIRR on Friday morning, but the authority was waiting to hear an update from Amtrak to understand the degree.

Around 5 p.m. on Thursday the MTA issued this statement about the TrainTime app: "Real-time arrival information in the TrainTime app has been temporarily disabled while service is rerouted to Grand Central and Atlantic Terminal. Customers should listen for announcements to learn how their train will run."

Earlier, passengers had been directed by LIRR representatives and by loudspeaker to ride the subway to Grand Central or Atlantic terminals. "Please do not descend to platform level," a periodic announcement said.

The LIRR suspension is due to an electrical track fire near the East River tunnels into Penn Station that had been extinguished, the FDNY and Amtrak confirmed. The FDNY declared the fire under control at 1:02 p.m.

Fernando Marcelo, who works at a hospital on the Upper East Side, was trying to figure out a way to get home to Freeport via the Babylon branch. He was at Penn looking at his phone to come up with a contingency plan.

"There’s nothing to do," he said earlier this afternoon.

He planned to wait a little while at Penn and ride to Grand Central if things didn't get moving soon.

Jeff Lejuez was waiting for the train to Mineola and didn’t know until a reporter told him Thursday afternoon that service was suspended.

The 77-year-old former business owner had taken the train in from Queens earlier Thursday, had lunch at Keens Steakhouse with ex-colleagues, and was hoping to ride to Mineola to visit his daughter there and help babysit.

Once he heard about the delays, he said he would go upstairs to get a car out east. Riding to Grand Central is too much of a hassle, he said.

"Not in the cards," Lejuez said.

Amtrak, which owns and operates Penn Station and the four tunnels that provide access to and from the station, said the fire originated on Line 4 of the East River Tunnels at 11:22 a.m. — and said the lines servicing two of the tunnels, Nos. 3 and 4, were shut down at the interlocking, the area of track switches and signals entering Penn, as a result.

The FDNY said 26 units and more than 80 firefighters worked the scene, but said firefighters needed power cut to the third rail in the area before they were able to deal with the fire. Smoke conditions complicated the issue.

Just before 1 p.m. Amtrak announced all of its southbound Northeast Corridor service into Penn Station had been stopped as a result of the track fire.

Meanwhile, the LIRR said on its website that customers could expect delays, cancellations and reroutes along the Babylon, Port Washington and Ronkonkoma branches. Many trains were diverted to Grand Central

In a statement posted to its X account, Amtrak said: "Temporary Hold: Due to local municipal officials working in the area, all traffic traveling southbound into New York (NYP) is temporarily stopped. We will provide updates as they become available."