A large group of teens is suspected of moving a parked J train under lower Manhattan Saturday afternoon, the Daily News has learned — blocking a switch track and tangling up weekend service with delays.
The trouble began shortly after noon Saturday, when the subway control tower responsible for the lower Manhattan portion of the J line reported signal failures on the turnaround tracks south of the line’s Broad St. terminal, sources told The News.
The outage led MTA’s rail control center to hold multiple downtown trains in their stations, telling at least one train to run backward into the Fulton St. station.
Unbeknown to the train traffic controllers at the time, the signal issues were the result of a J train that had overrun a red signal on the storage tracks south of Broad St., obstructing a switch used by trains to turn around at the end of their run.
With the switch unable to move and set a safe path through that portion of track, the signal system “failed safe” to keep other trains out of the area.
But the occluded switch was only discovered after a transit worker observed a group of 15-20 teenagers on the Broad St. platform with cameras, filming a train amid the signal issues, and decided to check the nearby storage tracks, a source told The News.
The worker found the parked J train fouling a switch along the storage track, with evidence it had run through a red signal.
The transit worker then boarded the train, sources said, only to have it begin moving backward, away from the switch track. The worker then pulled the emergency brake to stop the train before getting off to inform the control tower.
A subsequent investigation of the train found that the operator cabins at both ends of the train had been unlocked, and a door to the conductor’s position midtrain had been left open.
Another transit worker later told authorities the teens had identified themselves as “train buffs” when confronted before the discovery of the blocked switch.
The MTA referred all inquiries to the NYPD.
Police confirmed they were called to the Broad St. station around 12:30 p.m. Saturday. An NYPD spokesman said the incident was under investigation and no arrests had yet been made.
A source told The News the J train was inspected onsite and then returned to service.
The incident is the latest in an ongoing spate of subway-related break-ins and thefts, many alleged to have occurred at the hands of young trespassers.
In December, a thief stole the control stick from an R train parked under southern Brooklyn — the same section of track where a young, repeat train thief recklessly threw a train in reverse during a joyride months earlier.
Last year, a 15-year-old boy was arrested in the Bronx after showing up to school with a backpack full of MTA gear and credentials, including multiple transit walkie-talkies, train keys and other tools.
He was suspected as part of the teenage crew that gained notoriety in January 2025 for breaking into a pair of R trains and moving them at speeds up to 30 mph along a section of express track in Brooklyn.