WEST HAVEN – A 52-year-old Metro-North track worker died after being struck by a train Tuesday.
Track foreman Robert Luden, of East Haven, was a 27-year Metro-North veteran, said Marjorie Anders, Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokeswoman.
The accident happened about noon at the construction site of a new train station, said Anders. Service between New Haven and Milford was suspended but has since been restored.
The train that hit Luden left New Haven about 11:50 a.m. and was scheduled to arrive at Grand Central Terminal at 1:41 p.m., she said.
Both the Metropolitan Transit Authority police and Metro-North will be conducting investigations into how such an accident could happen, Anders said.
The train sat idle on the tracks shortly before 1 p.m., when passengers from the front cars were being moved to the center of the train, one rider said.
The passenger, Michael Symolon of Farmington, said the train’s engineer blew the warning whistle very loudly as it approached the accident scene. “You could tell he was laying on the horn,” he said.
He then heard a “very loud bang,” felt a jolt and saw black soot coming out of the air conditioning vents, he said.
The engineer came out and said he knew the man who was struck.
“He was quite upset,” Symolon said. “He was pretty shaken up.”
By Christine Dempsey, Hartford Courant. FOX CT and Courant staff writer Kelly Glista contributed to this report.