More than 27,000 commuters were affected by train service delays or cancelations yesterday morning after two railway switches near the high-speed rail station in Greater Taichung were damaged by a lightning-induced power surge.
The incident happened less than one day after one of the high-speed rail’s northbound trains was forced to stop twice when an abnormality was detected in the automatic train control system, with the train backtracking to the station in Greater Taichung.
It was also the fifth incident in the past 10 days that disrupted the operation of the railway system.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) spokesman William Hsu (徐宜中) confirmed yesterday that 11 southbound trains and six northbound trains were canceled, and 49 trains were delayed because of the damaged railway switches.
The number of passengers affected by the incident topped 27,650, Hsu said, adding that the system was disrupted for almost five-and-a-half hours and did not resume normal operations until 12pm.
“We apologize for the inconvenience caused by the incident,” Hsu said.
He said the lightning-induced surges damaged the control box of the railway switches near the Taichung station, which led to the abnormality detected in the railway switches.
Prior to the incident yesterday, the high-speed rail system had been damaged by lightning six times.
Even though the damage was caused by a natural incident, Hsu said the company was willing to refund half of the ticket fare for passengers delayed by more than 30 minutes and give full refund to those whose trains were delayed by more than one hour.
Company representatives also showed the central module inside the damaged control boxes at the press conference yesterday, which has burn marks on some of the parts.
A lightning-induced power surge occurs when lightning hits locations near the objects, and the power generated in turn damages those objects, THSRC chief operating officer John Chen (陳強) said.
“We are now considering enhancing the installations of surge protection devices in railway sections that are more likely to be hit by lightning, including Yunlin and Chiayi counties,” he said.
Chen said the company was still investigating whether there were other areas that were damaged by lightning.
He added that the company was scheduled to install a total of 51 surge protection devices by the end of next year.
James Shi (史明嘉), assistant vice president of the company’s maintenance subdivision, said the company had never experienced such serious damage from lightning before.
Shi said the company had also checked the weather information near the Greater Taichung station yesterday morning, showing that there were intense lightning strikes at the time.
Although the company is adding more surge protectors, they cannot completely prevent damage generated by lightning-induced power surges, he said.
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