Metro-North commuters faced a triple whammy of train delays during the Wednesday morning rush, with a disabled train at the Larchmont station and another near Fairfield on the New Haven line. A cable fire near 110^th Street in Manhattan at 4:30 a.m. also slowed down service between Grand Central Station and the Harlem-125^th St. station, according to the MTA.

Shortly after leaving Larchmont at 8:01 a.m., passengers heard a loud “pop,” and the train ground to a halt, as the Larchmont-Mamaroneck Patch reported.

According to MTA Press Secretary Marjorie Anders, a broken brake line couldn’t be fixed, and “was taken to the yard.”

“Our customers were put on the next two trains,” Anders said.

These kinds of delays are especially frustrating to New Haven line commuters, as effective February 7, rush hour service cut was by 10 percent, while back in December, commuters saw increases in ticket prices of 11.1 percent. 

The reductions in service were due to a particularly harsh winter, according to statements on the Metro-North website, that caused widespread failures on air and electronic systems on the over 40-year old New Haven Line. 

On Wednesday morning in Larchmont, “throngs of people waited patiently for the next train, and then packed in like pickles for the commute into the city,” commuter Roselynn Scarfo told Patch, based on an account from a friend. “There literally were people lined up waiting out into the street because there was no room on the platform.”

Another commuter, Dee van Eyck, said she was waiting at the Larchmont station for the 8:21 a.m. train into Manhattan, which arrived at 9:15 a.m.

Van Eyck also took a photo of the chaos at the station. “If you look closely at the photo, you will see the masses of people on the Chatsworth Avenue bridge and the silhouettes of hundreds of commuters waiting on the platform for the train,” she said, adding that she was “one of the lucky ones” to board the first available train to the city.

Have you been affected by cuts to Metro-North service? If you have a commuter horror story, let us know in the comments section.