
UPDATE: The MTA plans to restore service by Thursday morning rush hour, according to its website.
A southbound 1 train derailed during Wednesday afternoon rush hour, leaving hundreds of passengers stuck inside — all said to be uninjured — for more than an hour.
The train stopped partly inside the tunnel that starts at West 122nd Street and Broadway in Morningside Heights.
“It almost felt like, for people on the train, like somebody pulled the emergency break. That’s what it seemed like. In fact, that’s what we first thought it was,” F.D.N.Y. Deputy Chief Dan Donoghue said near the scene.
“Upon further investigation, there was possibly a compromised rail, or something happened there, and there was a derailment.”
The train was carrying between 350 and 400 passengers toward 116th Street station when the front wheels of the lead car went off the rails at 5:50 p.m., according to the MTA.
Donoghue said the train will be “out of service for a while” as the NYPD and the MTA investigate.
On the other side of the tracks, uptown 1 trains continued to travel throughout the afternoon.

Two empty trains connected with the immobile train, creating one long path to the nearby 125th Street station for the passengers to exit.
The passengers were ushered into part of a nearby street sectioned off with white and blue police tape where they were questioned by officers.
Donoghue said the passengers had to wait for over an hour to be let off, “which, to them, must have seemed like forever.”

During the wait, the subway cars were cut off from electricity and, subsequently, there was no air conditioning.
“It got hot in that train,” Donoghue said.