Dear Brothers and Sisters
Good morning Jim
I will explain what transpired that started this Rumor.
I reached out to Amtrak and Metro North to ask if they had any Engineers that would be interested in operating New Jersey Transit Trains on their relief days, so that we did not have to annul New Jersey Transit Trains and live up to our customers expectations of the service that we advertise.
Both stated at this time they could not honor New Jersey Transit’s request.
There could have been internal conversations if Amtrak Managers Surveyed the Engineers, but I have no way of knowing g that.
The second issue that could have started the rumor was, we had a New Jersey Transit train sitting in Penn Station and I believe the Engineer that was to take it to Sunnyside expired under the hours of service and could not advance the train out of the station.
As you are fully aware, with all of the rehab work and several tracks out of service because of the repair, track space is extremely critical to help support the schedule that was put together to accommodate the maximum number of trains which results in the maximum number of passengers arriving ontime in New York.
Once it was determined that we did not have one of our New Jersey Transit Engineers, Amtrak provided us an Amtrak Crew to operate the train from New York Penn Station to Sunnyside
But please let me remind you, when one of our New Jersey Transit Engineers are late arriving to Sunnyside for what ever reason, Amtrak supplies us upon request to bring the train from Sunnyside to New York Penn Station to accommodate New Jersey Transit and our Passengers so that we have an on time train
Hopefully going forward from here, do not encounter situations like this in the future
Bob