NEW YORK — New York City subway service was disrupted for a second day Friday as transit workers worked in the cramped tunnel under Manhattan to remove two trains that collided and derailed, leaving about 20 passengers with minor injuries.
The crash happened around 3 p.m. Thursday as a northbound 1 train carrying about 300 passengers transferred from express to local rail at the 96th Street station, Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials said. Train 1 collided with an out-of-service train with four workers on board.
“We are grateful that more people were not injured in this low-speed collision,” MTA Chairman Janno Lieber said Friday during a briefing outside the station.
Lieber said partial service would be restored once workers can get the derailed passenger train back on track and out of the way. Nine of the train's 10 cars had been re-tracked by Friday morning, he said.
NYC Transit President Richard Davey said it was a complicated operation to get the 10th car back on the track because of the subway tunnel's low ceiling.
“The last carriage of the passenger train that derailed, there's no room for that, is there?” Davey said. “This is a tunnel.”
Transit workers “literally lift it a few inches, shift it over, lift it a few inches, shift it over,” Davey said. “So that process takes a while.”
Davey said the passenger train had the green light to proceed on Thursday, but the disabled train did not. “That caused him to crash into the train,” he said. “We don't know why, that is still being investigated.”
A team from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived in New York on Friday to try to investigate the cause of the collision between the passenger train and the other train, which was out of service due to vandalism.
No time has been set for an NTSB briefing on the collision, an agency spokesperson said.
Officials said the wrecked train, whose wheels were damaged by the impact of the collision, will be removed after the passenger train is put back on track.
Derailments and crashes in New York City's 119-year-old subway system are rare. The worst accident in the history of the city's subway occurred on November 1, 1918, when a speeding train derailed in a sharply curved tunnel in Brooklyn, killing at least 93 people.
More recently, five people died on August 28, 1991, when a 4 train derailed at Manhattan's 14th Street Union Square Station. The driver of that train was found guilty of alcohol intoxication and served ten years in prison for manslaughter.