East Rail line
The East Rail line is one of the ten lines that form MTR, the mass transit system in Hong Kong. The railway line starts at Lo Wu or Lok Ma Chau, both of which are boundary crossing points into Shenzhen and joins in the north at Sheung Shui and ends at Admiralty station on Hong Kong Island. At approximately, the line is the second longest line within the network, behind the Tuen Ma line.
The line connects the new towns of Fanling–Sheung Shui, Tai Po and Sha Tin in eastern New Territories with urban Kowloon and the central business district. It is also the city's only Railway line that connects to land-based border checkpoints with Mainland China. The line is generally double tracked and electrified, except for certain goods sheds. All of the stations on the line except Admiralty, Exhibition Centre and Hung Hom are at-grade or elevated. As of 2018, the line carried around 1 million passenger trips per day.
Opening in 1910 as the Kowloon–Canton Railway , the line is the first heavy rail line in Hong Kong. Prior to the MTR–KCR merger in 2007, the line formed part of the Kowloon–Canton Railway network and was managed by the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation. On 2 December 2007, the line was taken over by MTR Corporation and was given its current name. KCRC continues to own the line and its infrastructure while leasing its operations to MTRC.
The same railway was used for intercity passenger and freight services crossing the boundary into Mainland China. Freight services on the line ceased in 2009, while the intercity passenger services were suspended in early 2020 amidst the coronavirus pandemic, with no plans to resume service despite border reopenings.
History
Background
Proposal
The United Kingdom and China signed an agreement to cooperate on the construction of a railway from Kowloon to Canton. The whole project was long, with in the British Section and for the Chinese Section. Construction started in 1906. The most difficult section was the approx. 7200-foot-long Beacon Hill Tunnel, and about a hundred workers died in the construction.Construction
The construction was mainly carried out by the Chinese. The government built camps in Kowloon to support the construction. Most of the railway alignment was on flat land, so construction was relatively easy in those places, however, the construction of the Beacon Hill Tunnel involved digging and blasting. The tunnel's two ends were of soft soil, but the centre was granite. This caused a delay in construction as it was not suitable to use explosives at the two ends while the explosives could not blast off a lot of rock in the centre.Pre-electrification era
The railway line to the Chinese border, then called the Kowloon-Canton Railway , opened for passenger services on 1 October 1910. The remaining section from Lo Wu to Canton was called the "Chinese Section". Initially, service was only provided from Yaumati station to Fanling station with a tunnel through Beacon Hill.After the "Chinese Section" was completed, through train service to Canton through Sham Chun became available. Lo Wu station also serves as a border crossing, with a bridge across the Sham Chun River, the natural border between Hong Kong and Mainland China. Trains had to stop at Lo Wu station after Communist China closed the border and suspended the through train service in 1949.
The line was generally single track, with a passing loop at each station. It was originally built with narrow gauge tracks, but just before opening standard gauge track was laid and the original tracks were used to build a branch line, the Sha Tau Kok Railway from Fanling to Sha Tau Kok. This branch was unsuccessful and closed on 1 April 1928 following the opening of a road that ran parallel to the tracks.
Through the years, more stations were added to the line. Sheung Shui station was opened in the 1930s, and Ma Liu Shui station opened in 1955.
The KCR engines were powered by steam engines before the 1950s. There were 20 engines. However, diesel engines were purchased starting from 1950, with the first one with number 51. Steam engines then disappeared from KCR.
The development of the towns along the line began to grow immensely during the 1970s, prompting a modernisation of the Kowloon-Canton Railway. The original Kowloon station terminus at Tsim Sha Tsui was too small and had no room for expansion, so a new terminus site was chosen in Hung Hom. Hung Hom station replaced the old one and the old Hung Hom station in 1975. Today, a clock tower is the only structure left from the old terminus, and is a landmark near the Cultural Centre, Space Museum and the Star Ferry pier. Six pillars dismantled from the original station building were relocated to the Urban Council Centenary Garden in Tsim Sha Tsui East. A big bell is stored at Ho Tung Lau. The original Hung Hom station at Chatham Road South was also demolished.
1980s modernisation
In 1975, the KCR asked two consultancies, Sofrerail and Transmark, to make proposals on the modernisation of the line. In 1979, Transmark's proposal to double-track and electrify the entire line for $2.5 billion was accepted by the government. This work involved building a new tunnel through Beacon Hill as the existing tunnel was not wide enough to accommodate two tracks. New stations were added, including Kowloon Tong station, which was completed in 1982 to provide an interchange with the new MTR network. Tai Po Kau station and the original Tai Po Market station were closed, with the latter being redeveloped into the Hong Kong Railway Museum. The development finished in sections between 1982 and 1983, with new Metro Cammell EMUs, manufactured by Metro-Cammell in England, replacing diesel locomotives.With the modernisation of the railway and the concurrent urbanisation of the New Territories, ridership rose quickly, from a daily average of 190,000 in 1983 to 491,000 in 1990. A temporary station in Tai Wai opened in 1983 while the permanent Tai Wai station was completed in 1986. Fo Tan station opened in 1985 to serve the expanding industrial estate. Tai Wo station opened in 1989 to serve Tai Wo Estate and to replace Tai Po Kau station and the old Tai Po Market station.
Expansion since the 1990s
The 1990s saw more rapid development and changes within the railway. The Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation signed a contract with Anglo-French manufacturing giant GEC-Alsthom to refurbish the Metro-Cammell EMUs at the East Rail depot at Ho Tung Lau. In 1996, the first refurbished train was put into service on the line, which was now known as KCR East Rail, and trains now allow passengers to traverse from one end to another, when trains once ran on four three-car EMUs. All but three of the 351 railcars were refurbished; the only unit exempt from refurbishment was unit E44, which is currently stored in Ho Tung Lau depot. The yellow-cab train was formally retired with a "Farewell Ride" on 31 October 1999.When refurbished, each set was still made up of 12 cars. Prior to the rule proclaimed in 1994 which fixed the number of cars on each set to 12, trains were inconsistent in terms of length, ranging from six cars, nine cars to 12 cars.
In terms of appearance, trains no longer have the monotonous design of having a red stripe running across the middle from the cab to the end; the doors now have a red coating, and the window panes along with the upper part are fashioned with blue paint. The original design of the train front, encapsulating the driver's cab and commonly referred to as the "Yellow-cab", was replaced with a more modern design capped with a silver coating, and a digital display added providing the train's destination.
The design of the EMU was modified as well: four more sets of doors being added to each car, adding up to a total of ten sets of doors, each side with five; the introduction of new passenger information plasma display; and more standing space by rearranging seating patterns from the traditional back-to-back seating to a longitudinal design.
In 1998, a new signalling system, known as Transmission balise-locomotive, came into operation on the line. This Automatic Train Protection system, a replacement for the previous Automatic Warning System developed in Britain, ensures a safe distance is maintained between trains. It also allowed an increase in train frequencies from 20 to 24 per hour each way. The control centre was also relocated from Kowloon station to a new facility in the KCRC operations headquarters building at KCRC House. Also as part of the ATP project, a two kilometre section of the tracks near the Pak Shek Kok reclamation, curving around the former coastline, was straightened out during the mid-1990s. The tracks now run alongside the Tolo Highway. A vestige of the former alignment, an old bridge beside Cheung Shue Tan village built between 1906 and 1909, was identified by the Antiquities and Monuments Office in 2008 as a historic asset.
In 2002, an automatic train operation system was added to TBL, which controls the speed of the train for the driver and ensures that all trains will stop when arriving at every station. Under normal circumstances, most trains are operated in ATO mode except for scenarios such as operation of trains in and out of train depots, driver training, or at times when the ATO system fails to function properly. However, intercity trains using the East Rail line continue to operate on AWS.In 2004, the railway was extended in tunnel to a new southern terminus at East Tsim Sha Tsui station. On 28 December 2004, a branch to the East Rail, the Ma On Shan Rail was added, with an interchange at Tai Wai.
On 15 August 2007, an extension from Sheung Shui station northwest through a tunnel to Lok Ma Chau station was opened. This provides a second border crossing between Hong Kong SAR and Mainland China.
Development under MTR Corporation
The Kowloon–Canton Railway network, of which East Rail was part of, was amalgamated into the MTR system on 2 December 2007. The KCR East Rail was renamed the East Rail line. At that time, the line terminated at East Tsim Sha Tsui in the south, and Lo Wu / Lok Ma Chau in the north.On 16 August 2009, Hung Hom became the southern endpoint of both the East Rail line and West Rail Line after the completion of the Kowloon Southern Link. The section of East Rail line between Hung Hom and East Tsim Sha Tsui was taken over by the West Rail line, with the latter station becoming an intermediate stop on West Rail line.
As the COVID-19 pandemic started to affect Hong Kong in early 2020, the Hong Kong government closed all border crossings on the land boundary with Mainland China, including the Lo Wu and Lok Ma Chau Spur Line control points, on 3 February. During the closure, Lo Wu station served only certified residents nearby, while passenger service at Lok Ma Chau was completely suspended. Northbound trains terminated at Sheung Shui for three years, until Lok Ma Chau crossing was reopened on 8 January 2023 following the lifting of travel restrictions. Lo Wu station reopened to cross-boundary passengers on 6 February 2023, after completion of renovation.