NextStop Blog

If you rode MetroLink this morning, October 28, you likely experienced delays and boarded a single-car train, wondering if it was part of our Single-Car Pilot. It wasn’t. An unrelated issue caused significant disruptions to MetroLink service this morning, and what you saw was part of our hard work to ensure you still had a ride.

What happened

Early Wednesday morning, MetroLink lost overhead power, the electricity that runs our trains, at our rail yard in Illinois. Without it, we couldn’t bring trains out of the yard to start service.

The outage also knocked out power on both tracks between the Emerson Park and Fairview Heights MetroLink Stations, which further disrupted service. Our Maintenance team restored power to one track first, so we could keep trains moving with emergency single-track service until both tracks were back up and running.

By 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Metro’s Maintenance team finished repairs to restore power and return MetroLink to normal service.

Why all trains had only one car

With trains stuck in the yard, our Operations team got creative. They took five two-car trains that were already out on the system and split them into 10 single-car trains. That gave us enough trains to keep running our scheduled service. As soon as power came back, we started returning trains to their normal two-car setup.

Fewer cars meant some trips were more crowded than usual. We’re sorry for the crowding and for the frustrating start to your day, and we appreciate your patience while we worked through it.

Issue Unrelated to Single-Car Pilot

The single-car trains you saw Wednesday morning were an emergency fix, not part of our Single-Car Pilot.

Wednesday’s disruption also was not connected to the planned single-tracking work that begins next week. Details on that work, including dates and affected stations, can be found here.