Metro-North Railroad Hudson Line Mudslide: Crews Worked 43 Hours to Clear Debris

The MTA Metro-North Railroad Hudson Line experienced a mudslide on October 21st and crews worked for 43 hours to clear the soil and debris.

Courtesy of MTA

SCARBOROUGH, N.Y. – The MTA Metro-North Railroad Hudson Line experienced a mudslide on October 21st and crews worked for 43 hours to clear the soil and debris.

The MTA Metro-North Railroad announced it has just about resumed normal service on the Hudson Line after a mudslide. According to the agency, a mudslide was reported at 9:45 a.m. on Saturday, October 21^st. Crews worked “for 43 hours straight to clear 350 cubic yards of soil and debris and 250 cubic yards of rock and cement walls.” As well, crews are working to break apart rock walls to “reincorporate segments to help stabilize the slope where the mudslide occurred, and they are repositioning other segments to the shore side of the Hudson Line, transforming it into ‘rip-rap’ that stabilizes the coastline alongside the rail line.”

Catherine Rinaldi, Metro-North President, commended the efforts of “Metro-North workers who’ve been out there all weekend long. There’s just been a tremendous, tremendous effort to get the service back this morning. We’ve got four tracks in that area; two have been cleared and we’re running on two, we’ve got two more that need to be cleared away. . . One of the other issues is that we’re still working with the property owner up above to make sure that the slope is stable. And that’s part of the plan in terms of bringing the service back on those two tracks. At this point, I would expect we’re probably going to be running on two tracks for the rest of this week.”

To mitigate any congestion-related delays, four trains (out of the 158 operated daily) were cancelled: the 6:42 a.m. train from Poughkeepsie and the 6:45 a.m. train from Croton-Harmon. The MTA also announced that it’s 5:30 p.m. Grand Central departure will not run, and passengers should use the 5:32 p.m. Grand Central departure instead. Instead of the 6:11 p.m. from Grand Central, passengers should consider the 6:15 p.m. departure from Grand Central.

For more information on delays in train schedules, MTA encourages its customers to use the TrainTime app or to visit MTA’s website and social media platforms.