SINGAPORE - A train fault knocked out a stretch of the North-South Line (NSL) from Marina South Pier to Newton for almost an hour on Thursday (April 21) morning.

Mr Patrick Nathan, SMRT's vice-president for corporate information and communications, said services in the direction of Jurong East were affected as engineering staff worked to move a locomotive that had stalled at Raffles Place.

"A passenger train was activated to haul the faulty locomotive to Bishan Depot. The cause of the fault on the locomotive is being investigated," he said.

Mr Nathan, who also apologised to commuters for the inconvenience caused, added that shuttle buses were activated between Marina South Pier and Newton.

The rail operator first informed commuters of the disruption on its Twitter account at 6.09am.

An update at about 6.18am said the estimated resumption time of train service was 6.45am.

Normal service eventually resumed at around 6.53am.

Responding to a commuter's complaint on Twitter that she had to wait seven minutes for her train at Braddell station, SMRT said it was currently replacing the network's signalling system.

"This project will reduce the waiting time for commuters," SMRT added.

Another commuter rebuked SMRT for not fixing recurring issues on the line, to which the operator replied: "We conduct daily checks to ensure all systems are working well, there's unexpected train faults might occur at that time."

Thursday morning's disruption comes just two days after Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan's announcement that the NSL had achieved the 100-day milestone without any major incident.

Mr Khaw had noted in a blog post that the achievement was "no mean feat" as the NSL was the oldest of Singapore's five MRT lines.