Oh no, not again

TNP PHOTO: Yap Ning

Ironically, retail manager Timothy Tang was reading The New Paper headline “SMRT: No effort spared to make sure it doesn’t happen again” when he found himself in the middle of the seven-hour Saturday morning train disruption.

The 41-year-old was on his way to work from Ang Mo Kio station to Novena station, and had to try to flag a cab at Bishan.

He had been waiting for about 30 minutes when we found him. And he was irate.

But he was lucky compared to the 500 passengers trapped in an SMRT train yesterday morning.

They were walked through the tunnels to safety – exiting at Somerset station.

It was the third disruption in four days.

In a hastily-covenened press conference yesterday afternoon, officers from the Land Transport Authority (LTA) told reporters that the fault seemed to stem from the same “third rail” and “train collector shoes” which caused the failure on Thursday.

The third rail is a conduit for electricity through the entire line, and train collector shoes are devices which help pass power from the third rail to the trains.

This time, said LTA, a cover on the third rail had fallen off – and this again damaged trains, therefore disrupting train operations.

The covers are safety devices to keep maintenance workers from being electrocuted.

Related story: Aghast at being stuck twice