41.   To the firefighters, police officers, transit workers and emergency medical personnel, it was simply a sad variation on the theme of their lifework.

42.   Transit workers removed the disabled train, a difficult job with a piece of rail gone.

43.   Until then, the highest-ranking transit worker present was a superintendent, a midlevel manager.

44.   Wednesday night, the police were questioning the transit worker, Khabir Ahmad, a signal maintainer, and had charged him with weapons possession.

45.   Which is why the city shut down when the transit workers walked out last week.

46.   When transit workers, with gestures and body English, explained his error, he returned the token and got his money back.

47.   With fear and frenzy, commuters scrambled to safety while police officers and transit workers on the platform were soon joined by hundreds of their colleagues.

48.   Wresting concessions from transit workers would be the first and perhaps most important part of that campaign.

49.   Within minutes, transit workers had propped a folding stairway against the train and were leading passengers along a catwalk to emergency exits.

50.   A court on Wednesday ordered striking public transit workers to stop blocking bus depots as authorities hardened their position in a showdown over a month-old walkout.