PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. — Tri-Rail service is back up and running Wednesday after a system outage brought trains to screeching halt. The service was stopped for hours on Tuesday, leaving passengers scrambling to get home.
The executive director of Tri-Rail calls the outage "very mysterious" and said all systems went down for about 12 hours before trains started moving again first thing Wednesday morning.
Tri-Rail told WPTV its dispatching system, the backup dispatch, and alternate radio communications went down around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, impacting the entire corridor.
That brought Tri-Rail, Amtrak and CSX freight trains to a halt, causing major delays. Tri-Rail used bus service to help transport passengers from station to station.
The cause of the massive and unusual outage is unknown.
We're told adjustments were made to the network infrastructure to get everything back online, and Tri-Rail's IT folks are now investigating what happened.
"We're going to have a full after-action plan, both in terms of the technical issues that were involved, but also to improve communications with our riders and improve any services we can provide so we can minimize the amount of inconvenience," said Steven Abrams, the executive director of Tri-Rail.
Tri-rail said it's unclear how long it will take to determine the cause of the outage, but it's also taking steps to avoid this from happening again.