6 of 8 cars rerailed after 13 hurt in LIRR train derailment in Queens
Crews worked overnight to rerail eight cars after a Long Island Rail Road train derailed in Queens on Thursday.
By Friday, six of the cars were rerailed and the work continued to rerail the remaining two.
Commuters experienced delays and some cancellations Friday morning on several branches of the LIRR due to the cleanup.
Delays and cancellations were expected on the Ronkonkoma, Port Jefferson, Oyster Bay, and Hempstead branches as crews worked to make repairs.
More than a dozen were people were hurt when all eight cars of a train jumped the tracks near Hillside Thursday morning.
The FDNY said train 722 departed Grand Central Terminal and was heading toward Hempstead when it derailed east of Jamaica Station at 175th Street and 95th Avenue after 11 a.m.
There were 13 injuries in all. Nine of those injuries were minor, two were considered moderate and two were considered more serious.
“The train started bouncing all over the place, everyone started screaming and yelling and then it stopped,” a passenger named John said, describing the chaotic moments of the derailment.
While the injuries were generally minor, the question remains on what caused the derailment in the first place.
The LIRR says the investigation is just getting underway, as are repairs in one of the railroad’s busiest spots just east of Jamaica.
“The restoration process is not merely a matter of rerailing the train,” said MTA Chairman Janno Lieber. “There is damage to infrastructure as well that has to be addressed.”
LIRR Senior Vice President of Operations Rob Free added: “There is some significant infrastructure damage in terms of the rail, it buckled, which looks like a result, but again it’s preliminary.”
Still for something relatively minor, the derailment caused quite a scare.
The FDNY said they arrived quickly following the incident, and all passengers were calm, but some people were shaken up.