Meanwhile, officials from Amtrak and New Jersey transit are trying to avoid a summer of hell repeat, where breakdowns, delays and cancellations caused an uproar from commuters who were left stranded and angry several times throughout the summer.

But the CEOs told a group of New Jersey's Democratic Congress members this week they're going to need a big chunk of cash to do it.

Taking the delegation on a private rail tour along the busy Northeast Corridor, where many of the problems originate.

All to see the progress made over the last several months and the infrastructure challenges that persist.

Senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan reports.

As regular commuter trains rolled along the Northeast Corridor, a special Amtrak caboose struck members of Congress from New Jersey on a tour.

Democrats demanded to see whether ongoing repairs to overhead electrical wiring would avert another so-called summer of hell for Jersey rail riders.

They got an eyeful, said Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill.

You can see that this is a train system built in the 1930s that has had severe underinvestment in it for decades.

I don't think anybody feels like we are at the point where we can say to you today that we have a plan for next summer.

This past summer, you know, I was one of the passengers that was stuck at Penn Station trying to get home to be able to get my kids back to bed.

But seeing just nothing about canceled trains or on all the screens there, the main question is, are things better?

Are we going to ensure that things are not going to go off the rails again in so many different directions?

The group pressed for answers, but praised Dam Track for making at least interim repairs to keep NJ transit locomotives moving along.

The breakdown plagued New Brunswick to New York sections of track.

As Amtrak CEO explained, we've been partnering with our colleagues in new Jersey transit to look at all the systems involved here.

So that's the infrastructure, particularly the electrical infrastructure, the overhead wires, the substations that feed them.

And, with the equipment to look for opportunities for damage to occur between these systems.

And to be clear, we had a unique set of system failures that happened.

But any full system upgrades hinge in part on a diagnostic report from outside investigators hired to investigate the Summer of hell fiasco to see what the smoking gun or maybe the major cause was, and that we still don't know.

I mean, we can speculate, but I don't see the point of that.

And so, you know, they're doing why they're doing the repairs.

They're also doing, this investigation to determine if there's one thing or some major thing that has caused the problem that studies do some time in November.

In fact, there are a lot of different timelines to consider here.

But for RailRiders, only one really matters.

This last summer was like horrible with the train experience.

Honestly, riders still recall so many hours lost the frustration of getting stranded by canceled trains.

People should not suffer because like people like me, I suffered like I was there for five seven hours, wasted my time.

I had no idea where to go.

The busses were not there.

You got to do something about it.

It's definitely inconvenient in these passages.

Knowing myself, my family and some of the people that are coming in here for college games and everything else.

So they definitely need to get that fixed.

NJ Transit's come under fire.

It finally hired a customer advocate who has yet to meet critical transit riders.

If a train is ten minutes late, people start hating Twitter.

And that that comes with the nature of commuter rail.

And we know that.

And the thing is, people would rather deal with some pain upfront if they know it's going to be resulting in concrete progress.

To that end, NJ Transit's repairing its locomotives and ordered a separate study of its electrical systems.

Amtrak is investing more money to upgrade overhead power lines.

It's applied for $300 million in federal grants.

While these repairs are occurring.

We are trying to you know, they have applied for a long term capital project, two grants, one to upgrade the category wires, one for the signal systems for the area from New Brunswick or North Brunswick to Newark.

That needs where these things need to be replaced.

And that hopefully will also be announced within the next month or so.

Of course, politics control congressional purse strings and oversight.

The November election results could derail even the best laid plans in New Brunswick.

I'm Brenda Flanagan, NJ Spotlight News.