Service disruptions on Hong Kong’s East Rail line to last into afternoon

A faulty sensor has left an engineer’s train sitting stationary on tracks, resulting in service disruptions on Hong Kong’s East Rail line since Wednesday morning, with the operator aiming to fix the problem in the afternoon.

With the five-car engineer’s train sitting near Tai Wo MTR station, services have been adjusted to intervals of up to 24 minutes at certain stops.

The MTR Corporation said the train was found to have problems after it had completed work on a rail section between Tai Wo and Fanling stations early on Wednesday.

“We found that one of the sensors in the levelling system seemed to be faulty, so we had to get it fixed, and to make sure the train can operate safely on its way back, ” said Lee Kim-hung, the MTR Corp’s chief of operations engineering maintenance.

He said the problem, found in the crane wagon which is used to load equipment, had caused part of the train to tilt to the left. The other four cars were not affected.

Lee said the train did not derail and “remained stationary at all times” but some wheels had “deviated from the rail” during recovery work.