Electrical Fire Shuts Down Long Island Railroad

Nobody ever thinks about electrical systems until something goes wrong with them. Electrical power is very much on the minds of Long Island commuters, as an electrical short in two cables submerged in water from heavy rains apparently fried some 1930s-era electrical controls, shutting down the Long Island Rail Road yesterday for hours and sending 130,000 commuters scrambling for alternative means to get in and out of the Big Apple.

An article in The New York Times said the fire in a control tower crippled 155 track switches at a station used by multiple branch lines of the Long Island Railroad, and that because the equipment is so antiquated workers had to scramble onto the tracks to manually set the switches.