Train Service has resumed on North East Line

Train service on the North East Line (NEL) resumed at affected stations at 9.53 am today. Service had earlier been disrupted between NE17 Punggol Station and NE12 Serangoon Station due to a power fault which occurred at about 7.00am this morning. Throughout this time, train service between NE12 Serangoon Station and NE1 HarbourFront Station continued to be available while free regular and bridging bus services were in operation at designated bus stops between NE17 Punggol and NE12 Serangoon Stations.  

The hardware fault had occurred on the Overhead Catenary System (OCS), which supplies power to the train. A segment of it at the Buangkok Station was damaged and repairs were carried out immediately so that regular service could resume. NEL is the only MRT line that is powered by an Overhead Catenary System.

Our engineers found that the insulator on the OCS had failed. This was similar to the fault that had occurred in February 2020 where the insulator was a two-piece design that had fractured causing it to fail. Following that incident, we decided to replace the two-piece insulator with a single piece instead. Testing was carefully carried out and replacement works could only be carried out from September 2020 due to a delay caused by COVID-19.

To-date, about 30% of the 112 insulators have been replaced. Following today’s incident, we will be accelerating the replacement of the remaining insulators and target to complete it by June 2021, instead of September 2021 as originally planned.

We apologise to all passengers for the inconvenience caused.