Barge hit Susquehanna Bridge on Saturday near Havre de Grace, causing Amtrak delays

Brian Carlton, Baltimore Sun on Jun 6, 2026

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Thousands of rail passengers traveling between Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York faced delays Saturday after a barge struck Amtrak’s Susquehanna River Bridge, forcing officials to temporarily halt train traffic along one of the nation’s busiest passenger rail corridors.

Amtrak suspended service across the bridge Saturday afternoon while inspectors examined the structure following the collision, which occurred about 2:40 p.m. near Havre de Grace. By 3:38 p.m., the company warned in social media statements that all service operating between Philadelphia and Baltimore could experience lengthy delays because officials were inspecting the bridge after the collision.

The disruption comes slightly more than two years after the catastrophic collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, when the cargo ship Dali struck a support pier in March 2024, killing six construction workers and shutting down the Port of Baltimore for weeks. By comparison, Saturday’s incident only caused minor damage and no injuries, a spokesman from the U.S. Coast Guard told The Baltimore Sun.

The Coast Guard spokesman told The Sun that based on current information, it appears shifting winds pushed the tugboat off course, causing the empty barge it was towing to strike the bridge. The collision caused only minimal damage to the bridge’s wooden skirting, the spokesman said.

Train traffic remained suspended while Amtrak crews inspected the bridge. Some service resumed shortly after 5 p.m. once the railroad determined the structure was safe for operations.

Even a relatively brief shutdown created ripple effects across the Northeast Corridor, a rail network that carries hundreds of thousands of passengers daily between Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston. Some passengers in social media posts reported spending multiple hours waiting for their train to move. By 8 p.m. Saturday, things were back to normal, according to the Amtrak online schedules.

The Susquehanna River Bridge, which carries Amtrak, MARC commuter trains and freight traffic between Havre de Grace and Perryville, was built more than a century ago. The bridge has long been considered a bottleneck because of its age and design limitations. Amtrak started building a replacement in 2024 as part of a multibillion-dollar effort to modernize the corridor and increase capacity.