This was my life yesterday morning, which ended in my wife having to drive 30 miles round trip to rescue me and a stranded friend so we could salvage part of the workday:

Tuesday morning’s commute for riders of Virginia Railway Express went from bad to worse as first an engine failure then a brake malfunction stranded 1,600 commuters 20 miles outside of Washington and caused at least a two-hour delay for Manassas Line riders.

It all started when Train 328 broke down between the Manassas Park and Burke Centre stations around 8 a.m. The following train, No. 330, was coupled to it and its engine began hauling both trains roughly 45 minutes later, according to VRE.

But the aging engine wasn’t powerful enough to push the 14-car load up a hill heading into Burke. So in a scene straight out of the children’s tale, “The Little Engine that Could,” the chained-together trains backed up and “throttled up at a higher speed to get over the ridge,” according to spokesman Mark Roeber.

After pulling into the station around 9 a.m. the coupled train’s warning system signaled a brake failure. Cabs and buses were dispatched to the station to take riders into Washington or to a nearby Metro station, while some passengers opted to wait for the problem to be fixed. Others simply gave up and went home.

I reported the news on my Facebook and Twitter feeds as it happened, including posting the photo above of the scene at Burke Center just after passengers started bailing on VRE en masse.

As the Examiner noted, yesterday’s nightmare was not an isolated incident. Persistent breakdowns and delays, including two nightmares that I avoided last week thanks to VRE email alerts and a loving wife-turned-emergency-responder, have plagued the Manassas Line since summer. I have a loyal readership of Facebook friends and Twitter followers who love reading about the misery in real time.
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