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The cause of the
accident was not immediately known. A New Jersey Transit
spokesman said the train was carrying about 1,200 passengers
when it went off the rails at 9 a.m. EDT.
New Jersey Transit services were suspended into and out of Penn
Station.
A Reuters witness on the train, which was coming from Trenton,
New Jersey, said it began bumping and shaking before stopping,
and that a broken wheel was visible from inside the car.
"We have rail operation personnel and police on scene assisting
customers," said the spokesman, Jim Smith, adding that NJT
officials were investigating the incident.
The U.S. Federal Railroad Administration said it also was
opening an investigation of the derailment and sending a team of
inspectors to Penn Station.
LaTosha Lewis, 39, was on her way from Newark, New Jersey, to
her job as an accountant. She described chaotic scenes as
railway employees sought to shepherd passengers to safety.
"They kept sending us up to the back of the car, then the
front," said Jakwonk Dean, 20, from Newark.
On March 24, a slow-moving Amtrak Acela train derailed and
side-swiped a New Jersey Transit commuter train at Penn Station,
causing minor injuries.
Two other recent train crashes have occurred in the New York
area. On Jan. 4, more than 100 people were hurt when a Long
Island Rail Road train struck a bumper at Atlantic Terminal in
Brooklyn.
In September last year, a New Jersey Transit commuter train
plowed into the platform at the Hoboken, N.J., station, killing
one person and injuring more than 100 others.
(Reporting by Suzanne Barlyn; Additional reporting and writing
by Gina Cherelus and David Shepardson; Editing by Daniel Wallis
and Dan Grebler)
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