by KYW's Al Novack

The SEPTA underground transit system through center city Philadelphia was slowly returning closer to normal Friday morning, after an underground fire near City Hall shut down the Broad Street subway, the Market-Frankford subway-elevated, and subway-surface trolley service in the area of the fire.

It began with an overnight fire in an underground transformer room at 15th and Market Streets. The fire was discovered at 1:41am.

It took about two hours to extinguish the blaze, which damaged electrical wiring, communications wiring, and lighting connections. There were no injuries.

Water used to fight the fire also flooded sections of the underground stations.

Early commuters were taken by surprise and some were irate:

"This is really messed up.  We weren't informed on time about anything!"

But SEPTA did act quickly.  Shuttle buses were pressed into service along Market Street, replacing the "El" service between 5th and 40th Street Streets.

SEPTA support personnel and transit police helped inform riders how and where to connect to shuttle buses on the street, also trying to calm them down.

Repair and clean-up crews pumped out and cleaned the City Hall station, flooded by water used to fight the fire.

By 8am, most operations were near normal. The Broad Street subway was operating, and the El was back in operation -- but not stopping at the fire-damaged 15th Street station.

The only remaining service interruption from the morning fire was that subway-surface trolleys continued to stop at 40th Street because of  fire-damaged signals.