The good news is: Red Line emergency brakes work. The bad news is: They're hard to reset in the murk

UPDATE:, 9:40 p.m. Northbound Red Line still a mess.

Mirto Picchi posted this photo at 8:27 p.m., reports that train had been "arriving" for several minutes.

Hong Pong was on the Alewife-bound car that caused all the problems. At 7:51 p.m., he posted a photo of an emergency brake lever that somebody pulled on his Red Line car just as it left Downtown Crossing after somebody else got his hand stuck in a door somehow, and all the king's horses and all the king's inspectors, couldn't get that lever back in position again.

He described the situation in a series of tweets:

Another T guy just came thru the car looking for the inspector.. Briefly rebooted, we are stuck as heck still

I think i just heard them say they would do a "tack on" to force the train to move because it is stuck but I'm not sure #mbta

I think we just coupled to another train, it's probably going to push this one to park street.

We got pushed into park street. wasted guy whose hand had been caught in the door took a swig of listerine, after get out, he piss on platfm

Yeah he was boarding slowly so i went to the next door; someone pulled the lever after dtx. Because he was too wasted to keep hand out door