Temporary problems on 1, 2 & 3 trains they said in the news, but on the stranded train they didn't tell us much.

Temporary problems on 1, 2 & 3 trains (New York - AP, July 18, 2006 12:00PM) - It's not clear if this is weather related. But New York City Transit says power service was knocked out for more than an hour on the 1, 2 and 3 Lines in Manhattan. Transit spokesman Charles Seaton says service went down around 9:10 a.m and was restored at 10:35 a.m. During the outage people were advised to use the lettered trains. It's not immediately clear what happened. (Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) I take the 1 line and was stuck between stations on the #1 train. It was a little nerve racking as no one told us anything for the first 20 mins, but thank god I was on a car that had A/C (eventually my rapid breathing, and silent screams calmed down and I was happy I had brought a newspaper and a magazine to read on the train). Then they kept promising us that we would be moving, at one point we moved 10 feet and stopped for another 20 minutes. Finally after 70minutes it was able to roll only the first car into the station, we all had to walk forward and exit in the front door. (so basically it took 70mins for me to go from 23 street to 28th street).

Then I walked the final 15 blocks to work in the 90F temps. It could have been worse, when I got off the train I saw the express #2 train stranded in the station as 28th street is not an express stop. Normally if you walked between cars you would get a $50 fine.