Service on North East Line resumes

The North East Line (NEL) resumed full service at 2.10pm on Tuesday (Aug 12) and trains are progressively returning to schedule, said SBS Transit on X at 2.19pm.

Free regular bus rides as well as bridging bus services along the North East Line are no longer available, the transport operator added in a later update.

This comes after train service on the NEL between Farrer Park and Punggol Coast MRT stations was disrupted due to a power fault on Tuesday morning (Aug 12).

This was announced by transport operator SBS Transit on its social media platforms then.

There are bus and bridging services for the affected Sengkang-Punggol LRT stations during this period, said SBS Transit.

When AsiaOne visited Boon Keng MRT station at around 11.45am, commuters were seen milling around the station, with some looking disgruntled and others looking confused.

There were also some travellers who were seen asking station security about the reason for the disruption.

In an update on X at 1.05pm, SBS Transit said that services along NEL were available between Harbourfront and Buangkok stations.

There were still no train services between Punggol Coast and Buangkok stations, it added.

"We are working hard to recover service which may likely take two to three hours to restore. Please consider alternative routes," said the transport operator.

Power trip was due to issues with transformer: SBS Transit

The Sengkang-Punggol LRT (SPLRT) system resumed full service on Wednesday (Aug 13) morning, said SBS Transit.

In a post on X at about 5.30am, the transport operator apologised for the inconvenience caused on Aug 12, when SPLRT services were disrupted for about 10 hours.

SBS Transit CEO Jeffrey Sim said in a Facebook post on Tuesday that the disruption to SPLRT and North East Line (NEL) services were a result of power failure which caused a flashover - an unintended electrical discharge - in one of the voltage transformers used to regulate the power supply.

This led to a power trip in both the main and backup power supplies as part of the power protection mechanism, he added.

A voltage transformer reduces a high voltage to a lower, safer level, while a power switchboard distributes power from electric sources to several smaller circuits.

[[nid:720994]]

bhavya.rawat@asiaone.com