Upcoming trains for Singapore’s MRT.

I was reading up on Singapore’s transport system in Wikipedia (don’t ask me why, I have no idea either) and found out a few interesting things. First of all, two people have committed suicide and had their video recordings leaked onto the internet, at Yishun and Admiralty, by crawling out underneath and jumping ahead of the train respectively. morbid. but interesting. Read here and here.

On to less sickening stuff. Further down the line, I read that the majority of our train cars have been  operating since 1987, which is a pretty long time, and that the original batch of them have been refurbished between 2006-2009, with a completion on the 2nd of January 2009. Not bad. Also, Singapore boasts the largest rail depot, the Kim Chuan Depot, which costed $297 million and reaches a depth of up to 24m, with a holding capacity of 77 trains and employs 300 staff.

Also, the Circle Line that is currently in place has 31 stations planned, although currently only 5 are operational (which is Stage 3 of the line). It will also be the world’s longest fully automated metro line. I see the government sure likes to break records.

Finally, the most interesting bit(for me, at least), is that Singapore has ordered a newer model of trains, the Bombardier MOVIA, which is scheduled to start arriving in the last quarter of 2012 and they should all be operating on the Downtown line in 2013. The cool thing about the new model is that it will feature a dynamic route map display, which ought to be quite pointless but fun to stare at while you do nothing in the MRT. Also notable is that it has a new design of straphangers to replace the shitty unstable ones we have right now.

This article has been all words and chock full of pointless information, so it’s definitely time for some images of the new train I stole from Google and local forums. Hurray.

Outside View

New straphangers

Sexay route display

End seats

..wow. I feel all patriotic and shit, while at the same time also guilty for wasting away hours I should’ve spent studying.

You ought to be grateful.