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NEW YORK, NY January 29, 2005 —Subway riders are scrambling to master different ways of getting around, following the loss of a critical signal room in a fire last weekend. The fire at Chambers Street has led to a slowdown of A train service and the elimination of all C trains for the next few months. Transit employees are working round the clock to make the needed repairs. They're relying on old-fashioned but creative strategies.

The signal room that was destroyed last Sunday was a nerve center for the A and C trains. It wasn't exactly modern (it was built in the 1930s). But it provided electronic clearance for trains to continue along the tracks, with a system of circuits and switches preventing them from getting too close to each other.

Now that job is up to workers in orange vests carrying clipboards and radios.

JOHNSON: What's going on man? Long time time no see!

At Canal Street, Anthony Johnson talks to a motorman whose A train just pulled up at the southbound platform. He asks him for the train's call letters.

ACEVEDO: 1015-27 to Lefferts.

JOHNSON: Lefferts. Alright, you'll get a call in a minute.

Johnson writes the numbers down on his clipboard and disappears behind the stairwell, onto a narrow platform surrounded by intimidating signs about rat poison. There he'll communicate with his counterpart at Chambers Street about whether it's safe for the A train to continue South.

JOHNSON: Right now I'm going to go inside the tower and tell the gentleman at the next tower so he can give me permission to let him leave. FERTIG: Because another train just went through? Right, another train just went through. And there's no signals in here.

In other words, there's no use waiting for a green light. Those two red lights at the end of the platform will stay that way until motorman Noel Acevedo gets clearance.

ACEVEDO: It's going to look red, red and a yellow bottom. It's going to have a tiny little light of yellow at the bottom and when I hit the switch the stop on will go down and then I'll be able to proceed.

Once the light changes it's a careful journey to Chambers Street. Even after the train starts moving, we have to wait for men who were working on the tracks to get out of the way. We can see them from the front of the train.

There's a transit worker holding a flashlight, waving it back and forth to alert the conductor that he can proceed as we go down the tracks from Canal Street to Chambers Street. The train is moving very slowly and there are lights along the way to help the transit workers lining the tracks as we approach.

When the doors open at Chambers Street there are dozens of transit workers on the platform. Some are walking the tracks with engineering maps. And a whole cluster is gathered at the northern end, where the signal room was destroyed. You can still smell the smoke of last week’s fire.

The workers aren't actually repairing the signal room. That's a major job which is expected to take several years. But they are making a temporary fix of the signals and relays between the signals so the A trains can go faster, without having to wait for operators to communicate to each other. But workers like this man say they don’t mind the old fashioned system, which is still used pretty often.

WORKER: Sometimes in the midnight hours in general repair work they'll close off a section of track and set up the same conditions.

But most passengers rarely encounter workers using walkie talkies and clipboards to keep the trains running, especially in rush hour 2005. Wayne Allen of Brooklyn can't believe how unprepared higher-ups at the transit authority were for a fire.

ALLEN: It just shows you who's really in control (laughs) Stupidity is really in control.

The Transit Authority says A trains should be running at 60 percent of capacity in February, when temporary automated signals are restored, and at 80 percent in the spring. Full service on the A and C trains is expected in six to nine months.