Some 500 people on a subway in New York City were stuck on the tracks for seven hours on Sunday night after snow on the third rail shorted out the train's power. Meaning they had no heat.

The A train, headed toward Manhattan, stopped between the Aqueduct racetrack and Rockaway Blvd. stations at around 1 a.m. But for the really unfortunate, the terror started even before that—at JFK Airport, for example, as Daily News staffer and subway victim Erin Durkin writes:

So after a long wait, hundreds of stranded travelers shoved their way through the snow with their luggage onto packed airport shuttle buses - which got stuck again and again, finally letting passengers out to trudge the last stretch of road to the Howard Beach A train station. Then, we waited well over an hour in the driving snow for a train, watching two A trains pass through without stopping.

The best part? When the conductors announced that a rescue train was on the way, only to announce a few minutes later that the rescue train was stuck, too. Eventually—after the sun had risen—a rescue train did arrive and towed them to the next station, from where they caught another train. What can you say? Fifty-one-year-old Keith Roberts of East New York puts it best:

"They know how to raise the f—-ing fare every two months but they don't know how to move a train off the track or people off the train."

[NYDN; image via AP]