It all started when about 100 straphangers boarded a Brooklyn-bound D train at 59th Street in Midtown at about midnight.
Little did the passengers know they were about to endure a four hour delay that would drive them to commandeer a stalled N train, seeking warmth.
At the 36th street stop in Brooklyn the conductor told riders that the train was going on the R tracks, and they would have to get out and wait for another D train to arrive.
But instead, an N train to Coney Island rolled into the station. The conductor told passengers they'd have to ride all the way to Coney Island, and then double-back on a Manhattan-bound D.
After an hour and a half of delays, the train pulled into Coney Island, where passengers were told that all train service was canceled for the evening. To make matters worse, the MTA had also suspended all bus service.
"Where were we supposed to go?!" rider Eva Mahoney said. "I was really upset."
From the New York Post:
Finally a sympathetic conductor opened the doors to a stalled N train, and the passengers rushed on for refuge from the snow.
But not long after, transit police officers and MTA personnel told them they had to move the train to the yard, and that they had to get off.
"They were screaming at us," Mahoney said. She also said one MTA employee told her it "wasn't his problem."
But the passengers refused to leave and instead slept sitting up until the train began to move around 6 a.m. on Thursday.
The MTA's spokesperson, offered an explanation for what the straphangers experienced.
"The plan was to use the train as "sweeper train" to head north out of Stillwell and clear the N Line for the resumption of service," Seaton said. "Of course, there was a strong probability that the train would not make the run easily and what we did not want to do is strand these customers on a stalled train between stations."