NEWARK, N.J. (AP) – Power was restored Thursday throughout the heavily traveled New York to Washington rail corridor, after a power outage stranded thousands of rush-hour commuters, stopping trains inside tunnels and forcing many passengers to get out and walk.

Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black said at about 10:30 a.m., the railroad was able to resume limited power systemwide, and shortly thereafter trains were running at full power.

The outage stranded five trains in tunnels _ three NJ Transit trains, an Amtrak train in the Baltimore tunnel and another in the Hudson River tunnel.

The last stalled train in the tunnels, a southbound Amtrak Acela that had just left New York, lurched back to life at 11:15 a.m. after stranding passengers for more than three hours in the heat and darkness.

“We no sooner entered the tunnel than even us non-engineers noticed we were coasting, the air conditioning had gone off and something was very wrong,” said Jeff Oppenheim, a New York actor and director on his way to Washington D.C. “The rumor was that we were going to have to crawl out under the train.”

Joe Piasecki of Washington Crossing, Pa. was among 100 passengers who climbed down out of a stalled train near Elizabeth, N.J. to walk nearly a mile to the nearest station.

“It’s a kind of eerie, end-of-the-world feel,” said Piasecki, who boarded the train in Trenton. “You have these two trains sitting here dead, not moving. You can’t see any cars or anything else moving. It’s like the world died.”

He said of the 100 who got off the train, 20 to 30 were walking along the track bed toward the north Elizabeth station. The others were still milling around on the tracks, while many others remained on the train, where air conditioning had failed hours earlier and toilets were backing up.

Jan Brayan waited for over two hours to catch a train from New York’s Penn Station.

“There are things you can control and things that you can’t,” said Brayan, an account manager from Ann Arbor, Mich. “I just try to keep in touch with my patient side.”

Krista Barry spent the morning of her 23rd birthday sitting on the floor of a sweltering NJ Transit car on the same train, reading a book for more than 90 minutes.

“Everyone is calling me on my cell and saying, ‘Uh, happy birthday; too bad you’re stuck,'” said Barry, who lives in Pennsauken, N.J. but boarded the train in Trenton bound for her job as an office temp in Manhattan. “At least I get to relax and not go to work.”

Amtrak does not know where the problem originated, said spokesman Cliff Black.

The railroad’s chairman, David Laney said the power problem “cascaded down and shut down the entire system.”

Black said shortly after 8 a.m. Amtrak experienced rolling power outages up and down the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Queens.

Elsewhere, passengers were taken off NJ Transit trains near the Secaucus and MetroPark stations and escorted to nearby stations, where bus service was waiting for them. Diesel engines pushed a stalled train to the Secaucus, N.J. station.

NJ Transit suspended all service on its heavily traveled Northeast Corridor and North Jersey Coast lines. Midtown Direct service was diverted to Hoboken, where commuters could catch PATH trains to Manhattan.

John McAlonan took an Amtrak train to Philadelphia at 8 a.m. from New York’s Penn Station and ended up sitting on the train for an hour, drinking his coffee and reading his paper before he gave up and got off the train.

“The lights kept turning off, the lights went out three times and then they just stayed off,” said McAlonan.