Trains running again as of Friday night
PRINCETON – New Jersey Transit’s “Dinky” train service is back online, officials said late Friday.
After being out for several hours, NJ Transit reported train service on the line running again as of late Friday night.
The Dinky was out of service since early Friday morning, officials said.
“The Dinky is currently experiencing mechanical problems, so we are providing substitute bus service from Princeton to Princeton Junction,” NJ Transit spokesperson William Smith said Friday afternoon.
According to Mr. Smith, the 2.9-mile service that connects downtown Princeton to the main train service on the Northeast Corridor line in Princeton Junction went out around 6:30 a.m. Dec. 26 and it is not known when the service would come back online.
Mr. Smith also said he did not know what the mechanical problems were that caused the service suspension.
Passengers commuting between the Princeton Junction station and downtown Princeton can simply show their rail tickets to the bus drivers to use the substitute service, he said.
Mr. Smith said he does not know how long repairs would take to restore the service, but that NJ Transit would tell the public as soon as it reinstates the service.
“We will update the public as soon as it is able to be returned to service,” he said.
Although just more than a month since its opening, the service has experienced two other recent service suspensions, with the first on Nov. 24.
Mechanical problems caused the Dinky to stop for two days, as rail riders were offered substitute bus service to get to and from Princeton Junction.
The equipment-related problems were being investigated, said NJ Transit spokesperson Nancy Snyder at the time.
Mr. Smith said Friday that he did not know about the November service outage or its cause.
The service disruption came during the same week in which Princeton University held a formal unveiling of the new train station that it built.
The new station, which opened to the public Nov. 17 and held a ribbon cutting ceremony on Nov. 26, is a piece of the university’s $330 million arts and transit redevelopment project that is creating a new gateway to town from Route 1.
The passenger waiting room has a capacity to hold 167 people, long windows, an inverted wedge design in the ceiling and Nakashima wood benches inside. Seating also was built into the exterior of the building.
Still a work in progress, a Wawa convenience store, located directly next door between an area landscaped with trees, only recently opened its doors.
There also is a covered platform, with an electronic message board giving train times and a "Welcome to Princeton University" message.
Prior to the new station’s opening, service was disrupted on the line for almost five straight days in July.
That was longer than originally planned when NJ Transit announced temporary July service changes related to improving Faculty Road, including installing a new grade crossing.
The train was out Saturday and Sunday and then supposed to run on a limited schedule Monday and Tuesday that week in July
Mechanical problems, however, kept the train from running both of those days and into Wednesday, Mr. Smith said then.
In recent years, the service has been a hotbed of controversy.
Some residents are suing to overturn the approvals that the school got for the arts and transit project. Those cases have not been resolved, but the university has prevailed in all the legal challenges so far.