SINGAPORE - An east-bound stretch of the East-West Line (EWL) was affected by a track fault at Redhill station on Wednesday (Aug 30) morning.

This caused delays that lasted for over four hours, with normal train service resuming at around 12.30pm.

The fault was not linked to the new signalling project, said operator SMRT.

It first tweeted at 8.13am that commuters should expect an additional 10 minutes of travel time from Jurong East to Redhill stations. This was later revised to 15 minutes.

Almost three hours after the fault first occurred, SMRT said at 10.56am that the delay had been reduced to 10 minutes, then subsequently down to five minutes.

Singapore Management University student Tan Yan Bin, 20, who was caught up in the delay, said this is not the first time she has been affected.

These days, she leaves home earlier to pre-empt any train delays.

Software engineer Vignesh Sundar, 31, who takes the train to work in Commonwealth, said he was late because of the delay. "I have to inform (the management) each and every time I'm late," he said.

The EWL was last hit by a major fault on July 25, when an intermittent power fault resulted in trains running at longer intervals.

Train service between Bugis and Queenstown stations had to be shut down for around 30 minutes at mid-day for engineers to rectify the fault, later discovered to be a loose panel next to the tracks in the tunnel near Tiong Bahru station.

Additional reporting by Daniel Ong