Services disrupted for 30 minutes on Hong Kong’s problem-plagued East Rail line, spoiling first full workday for new shorter trains
- The disruption, blamed on equipment failure, took place at 11.40am and involved one of the new nine-carriage trains that made their debut on Saturday
- The same line experienced numerous glitches two days earlier as it rolled out an updated signalling system
Hong Kong’s East Rail line, already beset by signalling problems, ran into fresh difficulties on Monday as the first full workday for its new nine-carriage trains was marred by a service disruption that lasted more than half an hour.
An MTR spokeswoman said when the train arrived in Kowloon Tong, staff asked passengers to disembark and switch to the next train. Service between Hung Hom and Fo Tan was slowed down from intervals of seven to 15 minutes.
By about 12.15pm, service had returned to normal after the train was moved from the main track.
“According to our initial assessment, we suspect there was a fault with the equipment. Our operations control centre will conduct a detailed check on the train and find out the reason for the irregularities,” the spokeswoman said.
