ROCHESTER, N.Y. – The extreme wind and rain on Sunday caused massive disruptions to train travel, with Amtrak passengers calling News10NBC from the track where they were stuck for hours.

Passengers said they were frustrated because they didn’t hear much from Amtrak during the delay. The trip from Penn Station in New York City to Louise Slaughter Station in Rochester was supposed to take seven hours. However, passengers said they were stuck in Palmyra alone for over 10 hours.

“It started with there was a tree on the tracks and some lines down because of the storm. Fair enough,” passenger Christina Alessandrini said. “Three hours we waited and then they had to reroute it because of all backed up trains. Fair enough. And they it just kept going. And now they just made an announcement that the engineer’s time is up. They had paperwork to do and now a new engineer has to come from Niagara Falls. Everybody’s freaking out.”

We know from the number of callers that several trains were affected. Amtrak has confirmed that downed commercial power lines and poles were the reason for the delays. Here is the statement from Amtrak:

“In order to move the trains away from the issue, we required CSX personnel to board the train as they are qualified to operate trains over the alternate route the train took as owners of the track, and since those are typically freight-only tracks.” 

On X, the train company posted about power outages and debris slowing down travel from Syracuse to Niagara.

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