Rail service down for an hour

An earthquake measuring 5.1 on the open-ended Richter scale rocked parts of Taiwan yesterday, resulting in a one hour-suspension of train service on the Huatung(花東) Railway, which links the Hualien and Taitung counties. The Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) said it had to close the Huatung Railway in order to carry out safety checks after the temblor struck at 9:12am. The railway was reopened at 10:10am after TRA engineers found no problems with the tracks. The quake's epicenter was about 8.3km southwest of the Hsincheng (新城) seismology station in Hualien County at a depth of 17.1km, the Central Weather Bureau's seismology center said. Residents in Hualien City and Chian (吉安) Village felt the tremor, but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties.