Major Amtrak, Metra Delays Caused By Worker Falling: Report

CHICAGO — A technical problem that impacted more than 60,000 commuters Thursday at Union Station was caused by a worker falling on a circuit board, according to a report by ABC 7 Chicago. Amtrak released a statement Friday that blamed the signal issues on "human error," but didn't specify how the error occurred.

"The root cause was human error in the process of deploying a server upgrade in our technology facility that supports our dispatch control system at Chicago Union Station," said Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari in a statement.

Senator Dick Durbin said Amtrak's CEO told him that a worker who was trying to do a server upgrade fell and hit a circuit board, ABC 7 reported.

The BNSF, SouthWest, Milwaukee District North and North Central lines were impacted, and thousands of commuters were left stranded during Thursday evening's rush hour commute.

Workers had to use manual controls for the passenger railroad, which caused delays.

"We own the system. We will fix this problem," Magliari said. "More importantly, we are taking steps to improve our operations in Chicago, which include appointing a veteran Amtrak executive to make sure we deliver the performance our stakeholders expect of us."

Train service was back to normal Friday morning.