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              NYC Commuters Warned of Delays Following Derailment

   by Reuters

   Commuters from New York City's northern suburbs faced travel delays on
   Monday morning, the day after a seven-car train derailment that killed
   four people and injured 11 critically.

   A portion of a Metro-North Railroad line between the Bronx and part of
   Westchester County could be closed for a week or more after the
   accident on Sunday, in which a Manhattan-bound commuter train ran off
   the tracks while rounding a sharp curve in the Bronx.

   Service was suspended on the railroad's Hudson line, which serves
   26,000 commuters on an average weekday, between the village of
   Tarrytown and Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal, according to the
   state's Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the parent company of
   Metro-North.

   The MTA was providing bus service as an alternative, and urged
   Westchester County residents to use its Harlem line.

   A team from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) arrived in
   New York City on Sunday and said its investigation would look at track
   conditions and the train's mechanical equipment. The board will also
   explore any link between Sunday's accident and a freight train
   derailment in the same vicinity in July.

   New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said it is unclear how long it will take
   the NTSB to review the "black box" data recorder, recovered from the
   train.

   "They haven't given us a timeframe," Cuomo told NBC's Today Show on
   Monday. In the meantime, New York officials hope to get rail service on
   the commuter line back up by week's end, he added.

   "We want to get service restored," he said.

   As for the root cause of the derailment, officials "haven't gotten
   anything specific from the NTSB," but it could have been a track
   problem, an equipment malfunction or operator error, Cuomo said.

   Although the tracks at the site included a "tricky turn," Cuomo said:
   "It's not about the turn. I think it's going to turn out to be about
   the speed more than anything and the operator's operation of the train
   at that time."

   The crash happened about 100 yards (meters) north of Metro North's
   Spuyten Duyvil station in the Bronx, in a wooded area where the Hudson
   and Harlem rivers meet. One car was lying toppled near the water.

   Monday morning commuters said they had come up with workarounds to
   avoid the closed line.

   Lisa Schulman, a trade show producer who lives in Dobbs Ferry, had
   turned to bus service.

   "I took the bus to the train, and I'll be dependent on the bus and the
   cabs," said Schulman, who had been on a Metro-North train that derailed
   earlier in the year.

   "It was very scary, we were fortunate it didn't turn over," Schulman
   said. "We were on it for a couple of hours, so this is very scary."
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   llowing-derailment/1801682.html

References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/reu-nyc-commuters-warned-of-delays-following-derailment/1801682.html