MTR Warns Disruption Could Continue On Tuesday

The MTR Corporation has warned that services between Central and Admiralty on the Tsuen Wan Line could remain suspended on Tuesday following a collision between two trains in the early hours of Monday morning.

Officials said they would only have three hours to try to remove the two trains from the crash site once the network shuts down overnight and it might not be possible to get this done in time.

The collision occurred during testing of a new signalling system and with the MTR closed to the public at the time, only the two drivers were injured in the smash.

The railway company said a Central-bound train ploughed into one heading towards Tsuen Wan at a crossover section of track and it was believed that a software glitch could be to blame.

Managing director Jacob Kam said the contractor involved had already carried out a preliminary investigation into what went wrong.

"In their simulation, they discovered that the software behaved exactly as we had in the incident," he said.

Kam added that the driver of the Central-bound train did apply the brake before the crash but it took time for the train to come to a halt.

He also said engineers were switching to a back-up system at the time of the collision.

Earlier in the day, the MTR's operations director, Adi Lau, said the MTR board would be holding an emergency meeting on Tuesday afternoon to discuss the incident.

Although no trains are currently running between Admiralty and Central on the Tsuen Wan Line, services between the two stations on the Island Line are still running.

But services elsewhere on the Tsuen Wan are running at intervals of 3.5 minutes and MTR officials warned passengers that they could experience longer than usual waits on station platforms.

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