Service on the No. 7 subway line was shut down for an hour and a half across much of Queens Friday morning as police followed a man who decided to take a 4-mile, sunrise stroll along the elevated tracks.
The poorly planned perambulation suspended service across a wide swath of the borough between 5:30 a.m. and 7 a.m., with power being cut off from the line as the man strolled between the Queensboro Plaza and Junction Blvd. stations.
The track trespasser — identified by police as Norman Baker, 55, and likely homeless — at one point perched on the third rail and, at another, hung from the elevated structure before being taken into custody.
The man on the tracks was first reported by the operator of an early-morning garbage-collection train just before 5 a.m., multiple sources told the Daily News.
The garbage train operator radioed in to the MTA’s rail control center to report that she saw a bald Black man in all black clothing walking on the tracks and holding a flashlight.
Police were notified via the rail control center, multiple sources told The News.
About 10 minutes later, another train operator reported seeing the man walking in a Queens-bound direction on the Manhattan-bound tracks, headed toward the 33rd St.-Rawson St. station.
Police were again notified.
Around 5:25 a.m., an NYC Transit supervisor reported that the man had made it to the 40th St.-Lowery St. station.
By 5:30, a half hour after the initial report, police had arrived on the platform of the 46th St. station, trying to communicate with the man, sources said.
All trains between Queensboro Plaza and 90th St. were instructed to hold in stations, and police requested power be cut to a section of third rail.
By 6 a.m., another MTA worker spotted Baker walking along the Flushing-bound track at the 74th St.-Broadway station, and the MTA’s rail control center cut power from another section of third rail, between 69th St. and 103rd St.
Minutes later, the man sat down on the third rail near 74th St. — perching on a thin cover above a rail that had just been carrying a lethal jolt of 600 DC volts.
After a few minutes’ rest, Baker was walking again, moving along the center track at the 82nd St. station, shortly before 6:15 a.m. — at which point police were walking the tracks in pursuit, sources said.
Cops and transit workers remained on his tail through the 90th St.-Elmhurst Ave. station, but the IRT interloper was “walking very fast,” one transit worker reported, and they lost sight of him.
Officers with the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit arrived at the scene around 6:30, 90 minutes after the department was first notified, a source told the Daily News.
Cops at the next station, Junction Blvd., reported they could see the man striding along the tracks toward them. But by 6:45 a.m., the rail walker was reported to be past that station and “hanging from the structure” while speaking with the ESU officers.
Baker was taken into police custody minutes later, and taken to a nearby hospital. He’s facing charges of reckless endangerment and criminal trespass, an NYPD spokesperson said.
The two-hour track traipse toyed inconvenienced tens of thousands of commuters. Eighty-two subway runs were delayed or canceled due to the unauthorized No. 7 line saunter, a source told The News — impacting an estimated 24,000 straphangers.
The MTA said it was investigating the trespass.
“Track intrusions have a huge impact to service and we’re looking into what happened today on the 7 line,” agency spokeswoman Kayla Shults said in a statement.
With Rocco Parascandola