Knuckleheaded railroading

[Full Service]

mtrak passengers along the busy corridor between Florida and New York were delayed for up to 20 hours after eight freight cars derailed on Thursday near Savannah, Ga., blocking the tracks in either direction, reports the Associated Press.

The cars were finally cleared from the rails, but about 2,000 passengers on six trains - three headed north, three south - were still traveling yesterday more than 30 hours after embarking on their trips, said R. Clifford Black, an Amtrak spokesman.

Black said the freight train's derailment had occurred at a "choke point" and that the Amtrak trains had therefore been unable to pass around it.

The tracks are maintained by CSX, which said it was investigating to determine the cause of the derailment.

By last night, passengers aboard at least one of the trains, Amtrak 98 from Miami to New York, were broke, hungry, exhausted and, barely having reached South Carolina, still many miles from home. They were also incensed, all the more so since they had been required to pay for whatever amenities were available throughout the ordeal.

"One woman had to pay $15 for a blanket," said Eleanor Meyer, 53, who was headed home to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., after a vacation at Disney World in Orlando, Fla., with her 19-year-old triplets.

"I can't believe in this day and age, for this amount of time, to go this short a distance, people are treated this way," Ms. Meyer said by cellphone.

Ms. Meyer said the first indication that anything was wrong occurred at a station in Jacksonville, Fla.

"They told us there had been an accident on the tracks ahead of us and that we were in for an extended wait," Ms. Meyer said. They had no idea.

The train sat in Jacksonville for 12 hours before it finally started moving again early yesterday morning. But only two hours later, at 6 a.m. in the middle of a forest south of Savannah, it stopped again because of the heavy traffic resulting from the derailment. The second delay was about eight hours.

During the wait, the toilets became clogged. The crew offered no food or water, passengers said, except what was available in the dining car, for a price. Those who could not pay were told they could charge their food, but only if they presented ticket stubs with their credit cards, said one passenger, Nancy Johnson of Washington.

An angered Ms. Johnson called her sister and enlisted her help in contacting The Associated Press. Ms. Meyer and other passengers joined in the effort, and soon news organizations were reporting accounts of the distress.

But despite those reports, Amtrak 98 passengers said at 6 o'clock last night that they still had not been offered meals or a rest stop of more than five minutes to stretch their legs.

Tracy Connell, a spokeswoman for Amtrak, said the company was working to provide free meals at the next stop, in South Carolina.

And Black said of the ordeal, "We regret it deeply."

(The preceding story was published by the Associated Press)