Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld said on Wednesday that the mass transit system could shut down rail lines for as long as six months to work on repairs. (WUSA 9) 
 
 Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld said on Wednesday that the mass transit system could shut down rail lines for as long as six months to work on repairs. (WUSA 9) 
 
 Metro’s top officials warned Wednesday that the transit system is in such need of repair that they might shut down entire rail lines for as long as six months for maintenance, potentially snarling thousands of daily commutes and worsening congestion in the already traffic-clogged region. 
 
 Board Chairman Jack Evans and General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld put rail riders on notice about possible extended closures at a high-level conference of local leaders. 
 
 The discussion also revealed strong resistance to what Evans said was a “dire” need for more than $1 billion a year in additional funding for Metro. 
 
 The officials’ comments underlined the depth of Metro’s problems, which are steadily becoming more apparent as Wiedefeld continues to probe the rail system’s defects since taking over as the transit agency’s chief executive in November. 
 
 Until now, Metro has typically done repair work at night or during short shutdowns over weekends. 
 
 Metro passengers at the McPherson Square station discuss how inconvenient it would be if their Metro line closes for six months for repairs. (Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post) 
 
 An exception was the unprecedented shutdown of the entire system on a regular workday March 16 for emergency track safety inspections. Wiedefeld ordered that closure in what now seems to have been an initial taste of more bitter medicine to follow. 
 
 [Will drastic action become Metro’s new normal?] 
 
 “The system right now, in order to do the maintenance that needs to be done, cannot be done on three hours a night and on weekends. It just can’t,” said Evans, who also is a D.C. Council member (D-Ward 2). 
 
 “So in order to do repairs that are necessary, it may come to the point where we have to close the entire Blue Line for six months. People will go crazy. But there are going to be hard decisions that have to be made in order to get this fixed,” Evans said. 
 
 Although he twice singled out the Blue Line as a candidate for closure, Evans said any of Metro’s six lines could be shuttered in full or in part. 
 
 He said the Red Line was the least likely to be shut, because much repair work has already been done on it. 
 
 “That’s up to Paul [Wiedefeld]. He’s the operations guy. I’m just the board member,” Evans said. 
 
 1 of 32 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Photos: What Washington looked like during the Metro shutdown View Photos Service was canceled across the entire rail system, March 16, for safety checks of electric cables after a fire in a tunnel. Caption Service was canceled across the entire rail system, March 16, for safety checks of electric cables after a fire in a tunnel. March 16, 2016 Near the closed Farragut West Metro station in Washington, commuters stand in line to board a bus heading toward Ballston, Va. Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. 
 
 Wiedefeld confirmed that he was considering such lengthy closures, but said he has not made a decision yet. He said he expected to do so within a month to six weeks. 
 
 “I’m keeping all my options open,” Wiedefeld said. “There are some bigger issues here in terms of power and track. . . . In the last few years, we’ve been trying to do this [maintenance] in a sort of piecemeal way, and basically we’ve alienated everyone.” 
 
 The officials spoke to 100 government officials, business executives and transit experts at an invitation-only “summit” called to mark the 40th anniversary of Metro’s opening by discussing how to restore it to its original “world-class” quality. 
 
 The prospect of lengthy shutdowns received a mixed response from the audience. Montgomery County Council member Marc Elrich (D-At Large) said closing an entire line for six months would be “a disaster.” He suggested stopping service earlier in the evening to allow more time for maintenance. 
 
 But Fairfax County Supervisor Penny Gross (D-Mason) said she would support such measures if Metro considered them necessary to fix the troubled system. 
 
 In limited shutdowns such as have been used in the past, Gross said, “you can do the Band-Aids, but you can’t do the surgery.” 
 
 [At heart of Metro shutdown, worries about uncontained electricity] 
 
 D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who was reportedly very unhappy that she wasn’t fully consulted about the March 16 shutdown, issued a cautiously worded statement warning that any extended shutdown would have serious impact. 
 
 “Shutting down Metro for one workday was an inconvenience; shutting it down for months at a time will have far-reaching consequences for riders and the entire region,” spokesman Michael Czin said. 
 
 Metro shutdown Voting is closed on this poll User Poll Results: Should Metro shut down an entire rail line for an extended period of time to make repairs? Yes No Pardon the interruption! We need to verify that you are an actual person. Yes No View Results This is a non-scientific user poll. Results are not statistically valid and cannot be assumed to reflect the views of Washington Post users as a group or the general population. 
 
 “The plan must be clearly laid out, allow for rider and jurisdictional input, and provide them adequate alternative modes of transportation.” 
 
 Harriet Tregoning, who represents the federal government on the Metro board, praised Evans and Wiedefeld for being candid about the system’s condition. 
 
 “I’ve been telling Metro for a long time, ‘Quit telling us what you think we want to hear, and tell us what needs to happen’ . . . and then let’s see what the options are,” said Tregoning, a principal deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 
 
 Tregoning said the impact on the federal workforce, which relies heavily on Metro to go to and from work, could be reduced by various means such as increasing the use of telecommuting and adding express buses. 
 
 Riders outside the McPherson Square station Wednesday evening described an extended shutdown as “insane,” “extremely inconvenient,” and “kind of terrible.” 
 
 “I don’t know how I would get to work,” said Meredith Westerlund, 25, who lives in Northwest Washington and uses the Orange and Silver lines to commute to a nonprofit organization in Arlington. “I would hope they would put buses in place that follow similar lines.” 
 
 Chris Williams, 48, said he might stop using Metro for commuting if it shut down for a long period. 
 
 “If I started driving in, I don’t know if I’d ever go back to riding Metro,” said Williams, who lives in Herndon and commutes to work in a government agency downtown. 
 
 Instead of an extended closure, he said, “I would recommend the obvious thing, that they shut down on weekends.” 
 
 But several people said that they would support a closure if it were necessary for the sake of safety. 
 
 “It would be majorly disruptive, but it’s better than constant delays and me wondering if there’s going to be a spark or fire,” Sophie Perry, 23, who works in consulting, said. 
 
 An extended shutdown for maintenance would be a first for Metro, but other transit systems have taken such steps as the nation’s transit infrastructure has deteriorated, partly because of lack of investment. 
 
 [Metro union chief: Wiedefeld is first general manager to truly care about safety] 
 
 Chicago shut down a 10-mile stretch of rail line for five months in 2013 to rebuild it and end chronic delays. The Maryland Transit Administration plans to shut down part of the Baltimore subway system, from July 23 to Aug. 12, to replace major rail components. 
 
 Wiedefeld’s predecessor as general manager, Richard Sarles, ruled out extended closures for maintenance purposes, on the grounds that they would be too disruptive. 
 
 Wednesday’s forum — “Metrorail at 40: Restoring a World Class System” — took place in an elegant room at the Mayflower Hotel. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) and the Greater Washington Board of Trade organized it to launch what they hope will be a year-long effort to increase support for Metro among local governments, business leaders and other parties. 
 
 Evans, who was elected Metro’s board chairman in January, used the all-morning forum as an occasion to sound what he presented as an urgent alarm about the need for dramatically increased funding. 
 
 Late Wednesday afternoon, he said he regretted that public attention was instead focused on the possibility of closures. 
 
 “Getting the funding and support for the system is the critical point I was trying to make,” Evans said. 
 
 Earlier, he told the forum that the District, Maryland and Virginia should create a dedicated funding source, such as a regionwide sales tax, to provide an additional $1 billion a year to Metro for capital investments such as maintenance. 
 
 He also said the federal government needed to provide $300 million a year in additional money for operations. 
 
 “If we don’t have that, we’re never going to get to be a world-class system,” Evans said. 
 
 He also said that the three local jurisdictions would have to increase their contributions next year to cover increased labor costs that he said were sure to result from negotiations beginning Friday over new union contracts. 
 
 But several influential local officials expressed skepticism about Evans’s pleas. In particular, Maryland Transportation Secretary Pete K. Rahn said Metro needed to improve its performance on safety, financial management and other matters before local jurisdictions would contribute more. 
 
 “Until the house is in order, it’s going to be difficult to get additional funding for anything,” Rahn said. 
 
 Fairfax Board of Supervisors Chairman Sharon Bulova (D) also expressed apprehension. 
 
 “I don’t agree that increased cost for operations [next year] is a given, and I don’t think that’s a good way to start a discussion regarding financing,” said Bulova, whose county is a major contributor to Metro’s budget. 
 
 “I’m not sure he [Evans] fully appreciates how much comes out of local jurisdictions,” Bulova said. 
 
 Evans conceded that he faced opposition. 
 
 “Listening to the comments, I’m not sure that a lot of people are on board yet. I think today’s meeting was an informational session to really alert people of the dire circumstances,” Evans said. 
 
 COG Chairman Roger Berliner, who in January was the first to propose the forum, said it was necessary to work harder to overcome elected officials’ resistance to more funding for Metro. 
 
 “We’re going to have to change that equation,” said Berliner, who also is a Montgomery County Council member (D-Potomac-Bethesda). “We can’t afford to wait.” 
 
 Aaron Davis contributed to this report. ||||| If you stand in what will be the longest and deepest railway tunnel in the world – the new Gotthard Base Tunnel under the Swiss Alps – you feel a current of air on your cheek and a hum in your ears. Peer down the dimly lit hole into the distant future, and for a moment you think a train is coming. But the thought does not last long; after all, with trains scheduled to rocket through at 150mph, how could it? 
 
 In fact, you won’t be able to catch a train through the tunnel for another three-and-a-half years. “That sound is the air conditioning,” my guide, Maurus, said. “Swiss labour law says that the temperature must not exceed 28 degrees [82F]. Without the air con, it would be as hot as 45 degrees [113F] down here.” 
 
 Once work on the 35-mile tunnel is complete, you will be able to hurtle in air-conditioned comfort from Zürich to Milan in just two hours 50 minutes – a saving of 50 minutes on the current travel time. Along the way, you can enjoy the novelty of burrowing 8,000 feet, or one-and-a-half vertical miles, below the surface of the earth – at double motorway speed limits. 
 
 For now you can join a group tour of the tunnels. These are organised by the visitor centres, where you can see a model of the machine that did most of the work: a mechanical mole nearly 500 yards long, weighing more than 300 tons, and guzzling as much electricity as 4,000 family homes. In good conditions, it chewed through more than 125ft of rock a day. 
 
 The tunnelling machines finished their work in March 2011, but engineers still have to complete installation of the track, power supply, and telecommunications equipment. The first trains are expected to thunder through towards the end of 2016 – 20 years after engineers dug the first shafts, and a year ahead of schedule. 
 
 More remarkable still is the effect the project will have on the emotional map of the continent. The new railway route will be 25 miles shorter than the existing one, as well as much faster. Not only will the Alps shrink in significance as a barrier, but the Latin and Teutonic realms will find themselves within commuting distance of each other. Europe is being redefined. 
 
 Which is why I had embarked on my journey. I wanted to explore a mountain barrier that has also been gateway between north and south for nearly a millennium. Starting deep underground and years in the future, I wanted to travel up and over this mass of rock as well as through the various tunnels that pierce it, threading backwards and forwards through a century and a half of railway history. 
 
 The Gotthard massif has an additional resonance for me. When I was a child, we would cross it every summer on our way to visit family in the Italian-speaking south of Switzerland, where my mother grew up. We would drive over in our 1961 Volkswagen Caravette, and as we climbed over Gotthard, I imagined our dormobile had shrunk to take on a guest role in a giant train set. 
 
 I had a similar sensation as I set off from the visitor centre at Erstfeld at the northern end of the Gotthard Base Tunnel, heading south on the existing railway route. At first the line climbs gently along the banks of the River Reuss. Soon the valley steepens, and to gain height the train throws a couple of balletic tricks. 
 
 Beyond Gurtnellen, it disappears into the mountain to perform a dainty underground pirouette before re-emerging higher up; and near Wassen, it spirals into the mountain, and re-emerges pointing in the opposite direction, back down the valley – before repeating the move, tracing an elegant zig-zag up the mountainside. 
 
 From our family Caravette, I would watch the trains as they played hide-and-seek with us. Now, from the vantage point of my train seat, I felt as though the whole outdoor train set were laying on a show. Three times the whitewashed, onion-domed church of Wassen glided past on its craggy outcrop: once high above, then level with us, heading in the opposite direction, and a third time far below. It was as if the scenery were giving encores – including once backwards, just to show off. 
 
 The train finished its climb at Göschenen, where I alighted, before watching it vanish into the funereal gloom of the first Gotthard railway tunnel. This, too, was a pioneering feat of engineering in its time: drilled, dynamited and dug between 1872 and 1882, the nine-mile tunnel provided the first modern link between northern and southern Europe – and cost the lives of 199 labourers. 
 
 To continue my climb on to the massif, I switched platform and boarded a train of the Matterhorn Gotthard Railway. The narrow-gauge cog train grinds up the wild and rocky Schöllenen Gorge, passing the giddying stone “Devil’s Bridge” atmospherically painted by JMW Turner 200 years ago. It was the construction of the first bridge here eight centuries ago that first made the Gotthard into an important Alpine crossing. 
 
 Suddenly the walls of the gorge recede, and you emerge in a long, wide valley lined with high peaks, popular with hikers and cross-country skiers: the Urseren valley. Seconds later you pull into a small station, Andermatt, at the junction with another line running east-west. 
 
 This historic town, with its pretty shingled houses and converted coaching inns, is a good place to get your bearings. Leading away from Andermatt are four great river valleys, echoing the cross on the Swiss flag. Follow the Rhône to the west, and you eventually reach Marseille and the Mediterranean; hike to the source of the Rhine just to the east and head downstream, and you would reach Rotterdam. Leading north is the valley of the Reuss, which empties into the Rhine; flowing south is the Ticino – which gives its name to Switzerland’s only Italian-speaking canton – into the Po and finally the Adriatic. 
 
 In each valley, a different language predominates. The Swiss to the west speak French, those to the south, Italian, and those to the north, German; while to the east live the 35,000-odd souls for whom Romansh, Switzerland’s fourth national language, is their first. 
 
 The Gotthard massif is not just a barrier and a junction, then, but a watershed, physical and linguistic, at the heart of Europe: a manifestation in rock of the divisions that lie at the core of this continent, as well as a meeting-point of peoples, and the centre of gravity of this curious little country of four languages and cultures. 
 
 It is also an intriguingly three-dimensional crossroads. Lowest of all is the new railway tunnel, at an altitude of about 1,800ft above sea level. The existing rail link is about 2,000ft higher – roughly level with the 10.5-mile motorway tunnel which, when it opened in 1980, was the longest road tunnel in the world. 
 
 Another 1,000ft up floats the town of Andermatt, while the original road over the St. Gotthard Pass lies another 2,000ft higher still: a millennium of transport routes, laid under, through and over roughly a vertical mile of mountain that is as perforated as an Emmental cheese. 
 
 Some of the tunnels in the massif were excavated by Switzerland’s army, for whom this was both a stronghold and line of defence. A former subterranean fortress has been restored and reopened last summer – home to the new Sasso San Gottardo exhibition, devoted to environmental, strategic and other themes relating to the Gotthard. 
 
 My railway journey, by contrast, took me west up the Urseren Valley to Realp. A tunnel leading from here to the Rhone valley opened in 1981, providing the first year-round link between the two valleys. However, its opening spelt the death of the Furka line that from June to October every year carried passengers over the pass, 2,000 vertical feet higher up. 
 
 Just two years after the new tunnel opened, railway enthusiasts formed an association dedicated to the resurrection of the summit line. Nine years later they reopened the first stretch, and 18 years after that – in August 2010 – they completed the final link, and were able to run trains on the full 11-mile route for the first time in a quarter of a century. 
 
 At Realp I met one of the thousands of volunteers who have helped restore the line: Paul Güdel, retired owner of an electrical goods business in Lucerne. He showed me the railway’s workshops, and the line’s two prize steam locos, built in 1913 and sold to Vietnam in 1947 after the line was electrified. Enthusiasts traced them to a jungle depot where they had stood rusting since 1975, and in 1990 shipped them home and restored them. 
 
 We boarded a waiting train and within seconds were puffing up towards the pass. As we climbed, Paul told me about some of the challenges the restoration team had faced. We soon reached one of them: the Steffenbach Bridge, which spans a ravine scoured every winter by avalanches powerful enough to sweep away everything in their path. 
 
 The solution devised by the engineers who created the line was ingenious, and remains unique worldwide: a folding bridge that can be dismantled every autumn. The restorers retained the original design – but whereas in former days a team of 20 men needed eight hours to erect or fold away the 32-ton bridge, now a team of 10 can do the job in six hours, with the help of hydraulic winches. 
 
 After about 45 minutes of climbing through the thin Alpine air, the wheezing loco had reached the highest point of the line: the Furka station, 7,100ft above sea level. We shut the windows for the smoky ride through the one-mile summit tunnel, before a long glide down into the Rhone valley – starting with a glimpse of the glacier that is the river’s source. 
 
 At the village of Gletsch we embarked on the last sector to be reopened, with a renovated spiral tunnel through the rock and a steep descent through fragrant glades of pine. Just before we pulled in to the little station of Oberwald, where the old and new lines rejoin, Paul pointed out the ingenious new level crossing – automated so that the toothed rack disappears below the tarmac as soon as the train has passed. 
 
 Not for the first time on this trip I had the impression that there’s nothing the Swiss like better than solving a challenge – especially if it involves mountains and trains. This seems equally true whether they are working with steam locos designed to crawl up mountains at 15mph or their electrically driven descendants hurtling underneath the Alps 10 times faster. 
 
 I wondered what my great-grandfather would have made of all this. He, too, was a railway man, who helped build a branch running from the main Gotthard line to Locarno. He used to tell how the construction workers, when they were laying track through the marshes north of Lake Maggiore, would receive a daily tot of rum to ward off malaria. 
 
 Three generations on, his successors are once again redefining the way the country sees itself. But by tunnelling under the great physical barrier at the heart of Europe, are they not undermining Switzerland’s raison d’être? After all, without the Alps, this quirky little country would not make sense. 
 
 Perhaps. But I am more than happy for busy folk to rocket underneath the mountains, clear of the spectacular scenery that is the best reason for lingering in this part of the world. And I am delighted that the line will divert much of the freight that currently crosses the Alps at higher altitude, and so reduce pollution – the main reason for building the line in the first place. 
 
 The mountains will be fresher and quieter as a result. I shall continue to catch the clanky old trains to get there, travelling at speeds with which my great-grandfather would have been familiar. And I like to think that, however far I travel from the childhood in which I first fell in love with this part of the world, I will never tire of playing with the world’s best train set. 
 
 Rail Europe (0844 848 4070; www.raileurope.co.uk) sells through tickets to major Swiss cities. For travel within the country, the Swiss Travel System (www.swisstravelsystem.co.uk) offers a range of rail passes. For timetables – including connections with boats, buses, cable cars, etc. – see www.sbb.ch. For general tourist information, contact the Switzerland Travel Centre (00800 100 200 30; www.MySwitzerland.com). 
 
 Admission to the three visitor centres of the Gotthard Base Tunnel (www.alptransit.ch) is free. A charge is made for site tours; reservations essential. Furka Cogwheel Steam Railway: www.dfb.ch; Sasso San Gottardo: www.sasso-sangottardo.ch. 
 
 Favourite Swiss train trips 
 
 A combination of glorious scenery and a faultless railway system ensures that train journeys in Switzerland are invariably a pleasure. Here are some of my favourites: 
 
 Full prices and timetable information – complete with details of connections with boats, buses and cog railways – can be found at www.sbb.ch. Prices given are for second class. 
 
 Lausanne to Martigny 
 
 The whole ride from Geneva airport towards the mountain resorts of the Valais fills me with happy anticipation. The most scenic stretch, perhaps, leads from Lausanne through the terraced vineyards of the Lavaux with their pretty winemaking villages – a World Heritage Site. 
 
 The line then passes the medieval Château de Chillon, on the shores of Lake Geneva, before climbing up the Rhone valley, with ever more impressive Alpine views along the way. CHF 24 single, approx. 50 minutes (www.sbb.ch). 
 
 Golden Pass Line – Montreux to Lucerne 
 
 The train climbs steeply from the palm-lined shores of Lake Geneva up to the chic mountain resorts of Chateau d’Oex and, across the border in German-speaking Switzerland, Gstaad. The route then leads down the lush valley of the Simmental before threading along the shores of six mountain lakes to historic Lucerne. CHF 73 single, approx. 5 hrs 20 min (www.goldenpass.ch). 
 
 Bernina Express – St. Moritz to Tirano 
 
 Less famous than the Glacier Express to Zermatt (www.glacierexpress.ch), this ride is nonetheless spectacular, incorporating the highest railway crossing in the Alps, at the foot of the glaciers of the Bernina massif. With the Albula Line from Chur to St. Moritz, all soaring viaducts and twisting tunnels, the Bernina line was declared a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2008. CHF 30 single, approx. 2 hours 30 min (www.rhb.ch). 
 
 Pilatus cog railway 
 
 The steepest rack railway in the world carries you from the shores of Lake Lucerne up a vertical mile to the summit of Mt. Pilatus, and spectacular views, in just 30 minutes. But it’s worth spending at least half a day on the trip – and heading down the mountain on the other side, via a cable car and then a gondola. CHF 68 return, or CHF 97.20 for the “Golden Round Trip”, which completes the circuit with a boat ride on Lake Lucerne (www.pilatus.ch). 
 
 Follow your nose 
 
 A series of rail passes, available to non-residents only, offers total freedom – and good value. The Swiss Pass enables free travel on 12,500 miles of rail, boat and bus routes, as well as admission to 400 museums; from £194 for four days to £434 for one month. 
 
 The Swiss Flexi Pass grants the same benefits on freely chosen days within a calendar month: from £186 for three days to £296 for six days. Two or more people travelling together at all times get a 15 per cent discount; children under 16 travel free when accompanied by at least one parent (020 7420 4900; www.stc.co.uk). ||||| A typical morning commute turned into straphangers’ worst nightmare after a packed subway train derailed in Queens Friday morning, injuring more than 19 people, cracking a rail and trapping about 1,000 people underground for hours. 
 
 Passengers described a harrowing scene as a loud screeching noise filled the tunnel just before the train came to an abrupt stop. 
 
 “The train was shaking and the cars in the front started tilting to the right,” said Melissa Delgado, 33. “I heard a pang and then a screech and then the train came to a halt.” 
 
 “It was a metal-on-metal sound and it was really loud,” said Razi Levin, 40, who was on his way to Manhattan. 
 
 The Brooklyn-bound F train ran into trouble near Broadway and 65th Street in Woodside. 
 
 Local service for the E and F trains was restored just after 5 p.m. as crews continued to feverishly remove debris from the tracks to allow rush-hour trains to pass through Queens. 
 
 Six of the eight cars derailed, causing smoke to fill the cars, inducing panic attacks and breathing issues for many of the straphangers. 
 
 View video 
 
 “It was a horrifying experience,” said Tayyib Siddiqui, 31, who was in one of the first cars. “We were calming people down, telling them the worst already happened.” 
 
 Siddiqui said people on his car thought the train was going to catch fire as smoke billowed in. Power was cut to the area quickly, which caused the ventilation system to turn off, said Deputy Assistant Chief James Leonard. 
 
 “I thought, ‘This is it, we’re not going to survive,’” Siddiqui said he thought as the train lost control. “Thank God the sparks were the worst of it.” 
 
 Many passengers feared for their lives as they felt the subway cars sway back and forth. 
 
 “I thought I was going to die,” said Jemina Asamoah, 24, who was on her way to Brooklyn when the car she was in derailed. “Thank God I’m alive.” 
 
 Angela Forbes, 56, was one of the passengers taken to Elmhurst Hospital Center to treat a knee injury. 
 
 “I’m going to be fine, but the memories are going to take a while to get over,” she said. 
 
 Forbes is concerned about the medical bills that will stack up, as her insurance company informed her she’d be responsible for covering the ambulance ride. 
 
 “I think it’s ridiculous because it’s not my fault the train derailed. I don’t think I should be responsible for that, it’s the responsibility of the MTA.” 
 
 More than 100 firefighters worked together to pull people trapped underground through street grates and keep passengers calm, according to the MTA. 
 
 The stranded passengers sat on the sweltering subway cars with little information besides a promise from the loudspeaker that “help was on the way,” said Alassane Ngaide, who jumped on the train just after 10 a.m. at the 71st Street stop in Forest Hills. 
 
 The original plan was to have the passengers walk onto a rescue train that would transport them to the next stop, but Ngaide said officials scrapped that plan and started leading passengers on an odyssey to the streets. 
 
 “I walked down the little ladder they put up against the train,” he said. “They walked us down the tracks in the dark to another ladder.” 
 
 Once above ground, passengers felt disoriented and were confused about their whereabouts. 
 
 “It was bizarre,” said Frank Lomuscio, 53, who remained calm throughout the derailment and helped a woman who was having a panic attack in his car. 
 
 The pilot and last train cars did not derail, but the six cars in the middle did, FDNY Chief James Hall said at a press conference. The motorman and conductor are undergoing drug and alcohol tests. 
 
 An MTA worker at the scene said there was extensive damage underground, including 500 feet of damaged track, a broken rail and five bent crash columns. 
 
 At the time of the derailment, the train was on a long curve that leads to a downhill run that has a speed limit of 35 miles per hour. While it is still unclear whether excessive speed played a role in the derailment, some passengers said they felt like the train was moving faster than usual. 
 
 “It was definitely moving at a fast pace,” said Lomuscio, an attorney sitting in the second car. 
 
 Lomuscio said this was just “another Friday in the Big Apple” and said he gave up trying to get into work. He took the MTA up on their offer to honor commuter’s MetroCards for a handful of stations. 
 
 Despite all the chaos, Leonard said, he was impressed with the way passengers dealt with the emergency situation. 
 
 “Of course you have to give it up to the passengers,” he said at the press conference Friday afternoon. “They are New Yorkers, they kept their heads and did very well.” 
 
 Subway service in Queens on the E, F, M and R lines is suspended and the MTA recommends passengers use alternative routes and plan for major delays. Limited access to shuttle busses is also available for E and F train riders.
– A rash of power line thefts is dogging Britain. An entire English village lost electricity for several hours on Friday after thieves stole some 3,000 feet of cable—and it’s the second such theft in that county alone since August, This Is Lincolnshire reports. It’s a running problem on train lines, too, notes the Telegraph. Cable robbers have been cutting lines and leaving the sparking ends hanging; today, firefighters had to be called out to address the problem. Rail officials found that more than 650 feet of power line had been cut, causing a fire and shutting down train travel into one of London’s major stations. “Yet again, commuters in the capital have had their journeys disrupted by criminals,” said a railway spokesman. “We need to see tougher sentences in the courts for anyone caught stealing cable and new legislation to help crack down on the minority of scrap metal dealers who knowingly profit from rail users' misery."