LIRR commuters faced significant delays Wednesday morning after two trains in separate incidents hit debris in a tube of the East River Tunnel.
The trouble began shortly before 5 a.m., when an out-of-service NJ Transit train headed west from Sunnyside Yard in Queens struck a piece of the third-rail power infrastructure, NJ Transit spokesman John Chartier told the Daily News.
The train was stalled in Tube No. 4 for roughly an hour. The crew was able to clear the tunnel by 5:55 a.m., an Amtrak spokesman said, and the train returned to Sunnyside Yards.
Less than 30 minutes later, around 6:25 a.m., Long Island Rail Road train No. 1509, inbound for Penn Station from Huntington, entered tube No. 4.
That train also hit debris — potentially a loose section of the third rail, sources told The News.
A subsequent smoke condition in the tunnel prompted Amtrak to dispatch a rescue locomotive to remove the train from the tunnel.
“All we can say right now is we hit a piece of metal down in the tunnel,” LIRR President Rob Free told reporters, adding that the incident was still under investigation.
Some of the passengers aboard train No. 1509 were transferred to another LIRR train bound for Penn, Free said. The first six cars of the train were separated from the rest and continued on to Penn.
Service on the Port Washington, Port Jefferson and Ronkonkoma branches was experiencing residual delays as of noon Wednesday, with Track No. Four still out of service.
Free said he hoped service would be back to normal by the p.m. rush hour.
One tube of the four-tube tunnel — No. 2 — has been out of service for nearly a year, as Amtrak work crews are in the midst of a major overhaul.
Tube No. 2 is expected to come back online this summer. Amtrak is expected to begin similar work in Tube No. 1 this fall, taking it out of service for an estimated 13 months.