Nearly a year after a mysterious railroad outage left passengers in the lurch, an Amtrak investigation revealed the cause Friday. Amtrak?s final report says a computerized controller in Philadelphia failed to carry out an important command that keeps the trains running. The computer then failed to send out a distress signal to workers and, in turn, shut down power converters from Queens to Maryland. The glitch caused all trains to stop directly in their tracks, prompting a chain reaction of delays from D.C. to New Jersey to New York. Thousands of passengers were stuck on trains for more than five hours, while others chose to get out and walk down the tracks. Amtrak says the outage forced it to make some changes since the May 2006 incident. The computer that caused the outage has been reprogrammed and workers now stand by the power substations during the rush hours to make sure everything is working properly.

Related Information