Negotiations between striking train engineers and New Jersey’s huge commuter railroad  will resume   Sunday following “constructive” but stalemated discussions  Saturday, after a union-led walkout brought the state’s transportation system to a screeching halt.

“We’ve mutually agreed to adjourn formal discussions for the day but will continue talking and look forward to resuming discussions tomorrow,” said NJ Transit President and CEO Kris Kolluri in a Saturday afternoon statement.

“Today’s discussions continued to be constructive,”  he added.

Both sides will sit-down again before a National Mediation Board meeting already scheduled for Sunday.

Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen President Mark Wallace said he had hopes for a deal with the resumption of negotiations.

“If we come out together, we’ll have a deal,” Wallace said.

Kolluri told reporters at Newark’s Broad Street Station the goal is getting “a deal so we can get them back to work” and “get our customers the reliable service they need.”

Meanwhile, he insisted the agency was preparing to alleviate chaos during next week’s work commute by “surging” buses to help scores of commuters at train stations.

He cautioned, though, that the additional buses wouldn’t be able to cope with the entire volume of the commuter rail system.

The strike kicked off Friday when roughly 400 locomotive engineers walked off the job after marathon contract talks tied to a pay dispute abruptly stalled, triggering the first strike to hit the major transport system in more than 40 years.

The saga erupted when the latest round of negotiations between NJ Transit and BLET, which represents the engineers who drive the agency’s commuter trains, stalled late Thursday ahead of a midnight deadline.

The union, which says it is seeking its first pay increase for employees since 2019, accused transit management negotiators of walking out of the bargaining talks early.

Gov. Phil Murphy and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) quickly blamed one another for the thwarted negotiations on Friday, but the transit CEO later said the union later offered a more positive spin.

The governor, however, publicly blasted the union’s actions as a “slap in the face” to commuters and a “mess of their own making.”

Still, union leaders are committed to staying on strike until it gets what members consider to be a fair deal.

On Saturday, protesters in red shirts brandishing the slogan “United We Bargain Divided We Beg” were spotted picketing outside a NJ Transit train yard just over the Delaware River from Trenton.

“Most of us would much rather be running trains,” Bill Craven, a 25-year veteran engineer, said.

“That’s what we do for a living. We don’t want to disrupt our lives, other people’s lives, but it comes to a point where we haven’t had a raise in six years.”

The union has said NJ Transit needs to pay its engineers a wage that matches those at other commuter railroads, including Amtrak and the Long Island Railroad.

The state has argued it can’t afford the pay hike because 14 other unions that negotiate separate labor contracts with the agency would then demand higher wage rates, too.

The agency said the engineers currently make $135,000 on average and that management had offered a deal that would yield an average salary of $172,000. The union, however, disputed those figures, saying the current average salary is actually $113,000.

With Post wires