Circle Line stalls for 2nd evening after fire causes power trip

SINGAPORE - For a second day, passengers on the Circle Line (CCL) had their journeys disrupted after several trains briefly lost power at about 8pm on Sept 18, stalling for about 15 minutes.

Rail operator SMRT said in a statement that a fire broke out in one of the power system cubicles at Kim Chuan Depot, leading to a power trip that disrupted the power supply to the entire 35km rail line. “This caused some trains to stall, and lighting within the trains was affected,” SMRT added.

The operator said the fire was extinguished by its engineers, who were on site, while the Singapore Civil Defence Force was also activated.

SMRT said it restored power to the CCL by 8.10pm and normal train service resumed at around 8.15pm. “We sincerely apologise for the disruption to your journey this evening,” it added.

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The rail disruption on Sept 18 comes after 11 CCL trains stalled for about an hour during the evening peak period on Sept 17 due to a power fault that also affected the entire MRT line.

According to earlier statements by SMRT and the Land Transport Authority (LTA), the Sept 17 fault started at about 5.50pm and power was restored by 6.05pm. However, SMRT staff had to manually recover the trains that had stalled in the CCL’s tunnels.

All the stalled trains were driven to the next station by 6.30pm, and services progressively resumed by about 7.10pm.

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The next day, at 9.35am, SMRT said its trains division had worked late into the night to complete an engineering diagnosis for the earlier power fault and had ensured that all systems were functional.

LTA said that it would investigate the cause of the traction power trip on Sept 17 and assess the adequacy of SMRT’s service recovery measures.

Mr Alfred Chua, who was travelling on the CCL from HarbourFront to Holland Village on Sept 18, said the train he was on stalled at one-north station at about 8.05pm.

Half of the cabin lights switched off, the air-conditioning stopped working, and there was an announcement that the train would be delayed, but no reason was given, the 33-year-old writer said.

“When the lights suddenly went off, there were some on the train who gasped,” he added.

He said the train got more crowded as it waited at one-north station.

After about 10 minutes, the train moved slowly towards Buona Vista, stopping twice en route. It then proceeded normally to Holland Village, where Mr Chua alighted at about 8.25pm.

He said he heard an announcement there that service on some sections of the CCL would be delayed by 15 minutes due to “unforeseen circumstances”.

Another passenger, who wanted to be known only as Mr Andy, was caught in both disruptions on Sept 17 and Sept 18.

The retired risk consultant, who is in his 60s, said he was able to take an alternative route home to Lorong Chuan via the East-West and North East lines on Sept 17, as he had seen an alert on the LTA’s MyTransport.SG app and noticed that the trains at Buona Vista station were at a standstill and packed to the gills.

But on Sept 18, he was stuck on a train at Caldecott station for about 10 minutes, as he did not see any alerts about the latest disruption.

“I was surprised because the app is usually quite reliable,” he said. “I was not in a hurry to go back, and the train was empty, so I had a seat and could just wait until the trains resumed.”

In the 12 months ending March 2024, the CCL was the least reliable among five MRT lines, and the only one that posted a dip in performance. This excludes the Thomson-East Coast Line, which has not fully opened.

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Based on the rail reliability figures released by the LTA in July, CCL trains went an average of 1.03 million train-km between delays between April 2023 and March 2024, sliding from 1.21 million train-km in 2023 and 1.84 million train-km in 2022.

SMRT group chief executive Ngien Hoon Ping said during a press conference on July 31 that half of the breakdowns during this period were due to upgrading works to integrate existing systems with the CCL’s three final MRT stations that will close the loop between HarbourFront and Marina Bay.

Mr Ngien told reporters that the project affects the execution of regular maintenance work, and that the reliability of the CCL “will go straight up” when the full line is complete in 2026.

This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.