Multiple passenger trains were delayed after a barge struck a rail bridge in Maryland on Saturday afternoon, officials said.
The U.S. Coast Guard said a tugboat pulling an empty barge “bumped” into the bridge around 2:40 p.m.
“There was very minimal damage only to the wood surrounding the pillar of the bridge,” said Petty Officer Austin Canos, a spokesman for the Coast Guard. He added that there was no damage to the tugboat, which reported the incident, and that there were no injuries.
Trains that transit the bridge were paused on Saturday afternoon. Amtrak, the train operator and the bridge’s owner, said crews were conducting a safety assessment. It offered no timeline on when inspections would be complete. Multiple trains with destinations to New York City were roughly two hours behind schedule, Amtrak said.
The rail bridge, which Amtrak calls the Susquehanna River Bridge, is a key part of the Northeast Corridor — the busiest passenger line in the United States.
The bridge is more than a century old, and its design limitations have made it a bottleneck, according to Amtrak. A new replacement bridge began construction in 2024.
On Saturday, one New York-bound Amtrak train came to a halt in Aberdeen, Md., a few miles short of the Susquehanna River.
Among waiting passengers, there was a rush of chatter and some scant applause when the train began to roll about 90 minutes into the delay. But it was only so a local Maryland train could reach its intended station south of the bridge.
“Unfortunately, we’re not actually going anywhere,” the train’s conductor said.
The train eventually began moving, about two hours after it had first stopped.
Andrew Trunsky contributed reporting.
Orlando Mayorquín is a Times reporter covering California. He is based in Los Angeles.
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