Underground train doors falls off in Hong Kong

[miklcct]

News from Hong Kong: https://www.dimsumdaily.hk/mtr-train-door-falls-off-at-causeway-station-service-affected/

(Hong Kong) A train at Causeway Bay Station on the MTR Island Line broke down at 6 o’clock in the evening today (2nd), and a train door fell off. The MTR confirmed the incident and stated that it has not received any reports of passenger injuries.

A rare accident happened in Hong Kong that a train door fell off when the train was running in peak hours. Fortunately no injuries resulted from this. The cause is still under investigation.

This is a safety critical accident as I can imagine if the same thing happens on a viaduct, dozens of passengers can fall out of a packed carriage onto the ground (on some other 1500 V DC lines there are no escape paths along the track where evacuation is done on track).

I haven't found any similar accidents in the past yet. Is this the first one?

 

[TravelDream]

I haven't found any similar accidents in the past yet. Is this the first one?

I've not heard of one.
Those carriages can get absolutely jam packed during rush hour as 6pm would be. People quite literally rammed against doors so it's a very dangerous situation indeed.

One thing that amazes me about the trains is how modern the interiors appear. They were manufactured here in the UK by Metro-Cammell from the late 70s to early 90s and have only had one full-refurbishment in that time.

 

[flymo]

MTRC here said the door of a wall mounted advertising panel came loose and hit the forward door leaf which in turn took out the rear door leaf also. Ironically it was an advert for MTRC itself that reportedly did the damage. After seeing some pics online I'm a bit skeptical as to whether the panel hit the door and took it out or the door came loose and then hit the panel. My own experience on these exact trains is that the doors can been seen and heard to move (sideways to the direction of travel of the train) on their bottom rollers quite a bit when the train is moving. We can only go on the MTR initial report though until something more official comes out but as it is MTRC we will likely never know the full story.
I've travelled on this line thousands of times, usually abut this time of evening, and it depends on which part of the train it happened in. These trains are 8 carriages long and the most people are found in carriages 3 to 6 as they have no clue about walking to the ends to get more room. I was usually in carriage 8 on these trains as it was usually less than half full about this time of day. Also generally speaking, lots of people both get off at Causeway Bay to go out for the evening or get on after work to head to Admiralty to change lines.
All in all, a big issue in that there is no 'plan B' for when the MTR goes off, that section came back online about 8:30 that evening and there was chaos trying to get anywhere from 6 to 8:30...
Below is a picture of the typical interior of one of the same type of carriages.

.

(picture shows the interior of a Hong Kong MTR carriage similar to the one involved in the incident)

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Why did it need to have the plural word "doors" in the thread title? A reading of the first posting makes reference to only one door.

 

[gordonthemoron]

Whilst MTR trains get busy, they don't get that busy. They're not like Tokyo

 

[TravelDream]

Whilst MTR trains get busy, they don't get that busy. They're not like Tokyo

You obviously aren't/ weren't a daily MTR commuter!

I lived there for a couple of years and several lines would frequently get jam-packed. The Island Line wasn't the worst actually, though you'd sometimes have to wait for a couple of trains as they would be too crowded to get on. The worst was the Tsuen Wan Line at Admiratly where waits of up to 10+ trains were not uncommon. It got so bad at one point everyone I knew would go to Central and double back on themselves just to get on the train without a massive wait. Yes, they were rammed.

 

[M-Train]

Why did it need to have the plural word "doors" in the thread title? A reading of the first posting makes reference to only one door.

The source is one of those cheap CCP propaganda sites which uses the plural here because the door has two leaves—and because it does not bother to check its English!

(Also, the train shown is the namesake for my account here….)