While riding the first of three AEM7-pulled Limited trains that departed Philadelphia for western suburbs along the R5 line, the AEM7 on my train suffered a failure. After the second Limited rolled past us at Ardmore, we sat stranded for some time as other local and express trains were routed around us.
Finally, we felt a bump, and after another few minutes, we were slowly moving. The third Limited had coupled onto our rear, and its AEM7 was pushing our train while pulling its own. I’m not sure if the second train was MU’ed to ours, or whether the second engineer had control with radio instructions from our engineer. When we got to my station stop at Strafford, I quickly got to the inbound platform to record the event. Here my train is being pushed away from the platform so the other train could make its station stop.
