The Long Island Rail Road restored full rush-hour service Monday evening after clearing a train from the tracks where it derailed near New Hyde Park Saturday night.
A total of 33 people were injured when the eastbound Huntington branch train was sideswiped by an eastbound LIRR work train in Garden City, about half a mile east of the New Hyde Park station, at 9:10 p.m. Saturday, officials said.
Trains were running on only one of two tracks between Mineola and New Hyde Park, one of the busiest stretches of the LIRR’s Main Line, most of Monday as work continued to get the derailed 12-car passenger train off the second track and repair any damage, officials said.
Workers got the last car of the derailed train off the tracks at 9:45 a.m. Monday and spent the rest of the day repairing the second track and running test trains to make sure it was safe for the evening commute, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said.
“I thank all of the employees who worked around the clock to restore train service so commuters can get where they need to go as easily and as efficiently as possible,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a statement Monday afternoon.
Switch problems near Mineola still snarled commutes, causing delays averaging 30 to 45 minutes.
The LIRR had restored limited service on the Oyster Bay, Ronkonkoma and Port Jefferson branches for commuters Monday morning, with 14 trains canceled and riders told to anticipate 20- to 30-minute delays.
About 20 workers in orange vests could be seen on the tracks and in the train Sunday morning. The first three cars on the 12-car train, which was carrying about 600 passengers Sunday evening, had visible dents and holes. The second car had a yellow stripe where the work train scraped it.
Among the injured were 26 passengers and seven LIRR employees, five from the passenger train and two from the work train, Thomas Prendergast, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman and CEO, said at a news conference Sunday.
“The real story here is no fatalities, and that’s a great testament to our first-responders,” Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano said Sunday.
The railroad has yet to determine why the one-car work train “came over into the clearance” of the eastbound passenger track or how fast the trains were traveling, but the passenger train was likely moving faster, Prendergast said.
The National Transportation Safety Board, a federal agency, will investigate the incident, Cuomo said Sunday.
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer told Newsday he thinks “human error” contributed to the crash.
“Probably someone who left the switch in the wrong position and as a result caused a maintenance train to sideswipe a passenger train,” Schumer told Newsday.
The derailment happened about nine days after a New Jersey Transit train crashed at a Hoboken, N.J. station, killing one person and injuring more than 100.
The work train was performing scheduled work on the westbound track, which was closed over the weekend, Prendergast said.
First-responders, including dozens of firefighters from the New Hyde Park Fire Department, went onto the train to help injured passengers and get others off the train, said Ed Powers, a New Hyde Park firefighter who was on the scene Saturday night.
“They triaged them up there. They did a good job,” Powers said Sunday. “Everybody did a good job.”
One man who lives on the south side of the railroad tracks said he heard a loud noise and at first thought a nearby metal overhang might have crashed onto the tracks.
“It sounded like thunder for about 45 seconds,” said the man, who declined to give his name.
Passengers posted pictures of the damage and video from inside the train on Twitter Saturday night. Some reported passengers having broken bones, but that most were unharmed.
“This could have been a lot worse,” Ray Martel wrote in a tweet.
Lonnie Garrett of Coram told Newsday the impact jolted the chair he was sitting in.
“I felt the bang. As soon as I felt it I just started running,” Garrett said in a Newsday video.
Two passengers came to New Hyde Park Village Hall to meet family members, while others took buses to the Hicksville and Jamaica stations, New Hyde Park Mayor Robert Lofaro said.
“It was a very scary sight, to see trains lifted and tipped over off the tracks,” said Lofaro, who was at the scene.
Prendergast said the third track Cuomo and the MTA want to install along 9.8 miles of the LIRR’s Main Line would have helped the railroad get service back to normal more quickly.
“If we had a third track, we could be running on that track now and have surety of that track for the morning rush hour,” he said Sunday morning.
But Lofaro, a critic of Cuomo’s $1.5 billion plan, said the derailment likely would have knocked out service on all tracks.
“If anything this proves why a redundant track should not be put next to the tracks that are there already,” he said.
