Trip coil replacements on Tuas West Extension completed

All 113 circuit breaker trip coils along the Tuas West Extension (TWE) on the East-West Line have been replaced, with work to replace 150km of power cables along the stretch starting next month.

Plans for these replacement works had been announced earlier after a massive three-line breakdown left more than 6,700 passengers stuck on stranded trains for up to three hours on Oct 14.

The Land Transport Authority (LTA) said in an update yesterday that it had worked with rail operator SMRT and main contractor Alstom to change the trip coils.

Trip coils are components in circuit breakers which isolate power faults.

A faulty trip coil had failed to isolate a fault on the TWE on Oct 14, which resulted in the problem snowballing.

The decision was made to replace all trip coils along the stretch of the MRT line as a pre-emptive measure against power cable faults and potential service disruptions, said LTA.

It added that the early closures carried out last month along the TWE helped to accelerate completion of the trip coil replacement programme.

On the power cable replacement, LTA said that a new batch of higher-specification cables is scheduled to arrive from this month.

Work to replace existing cables will start next month on the section along Tuas Depot Intake and Tuas Link station.

LTA said: "For a start, these works will be carried out during normal engineering hours.

"LTA and SMRT will subsequently schedule early closures/ late openings on weekends or full Sunday closures from March to May 2021 along the TWE to speed up cable replacement work that is expected to complete by end-2021."

It said the public will be given early notice of the scheduled early closure dates and affected stations.

SMRT had said the breakdown on Oct 14 during the evening peak hour affected around 123,000 commuters - 110,000 on the North-South and East-West lines for 3½ hours, as well as 13,000 passengers on the Circle Line for just over an hour.