MTR: Tseung Kwan O Line

I’m not sure what to say, but this line is boring as hell, so don’t go out of your way to visit it – not that it goes anywhere of interest for a tourist. Operationally it is a little different from the rest of the MTR network, but photography-wise it doesn’t offer anything special. The entire line being in a tunnel doesn’t help matters! The line uses K-Stock EMUs which are newer than the M-Train stock used on the rest of the urban lines, but the only major difference is plug doors vs. the sliding doors fitted to the other trains, and some different interior fittings.

I’ve already described the interchange with the Island Line at North Point and Quarry Bay in the previous post, once leaving these stations you travel under Victoria Harbour, the immersed tube tunnel opened in the late 1980s as an extension of the Kwun Tong Line, and remained part of that route up until the opening of the Tseung Kwan O Line.

Once under the ground instead of the sea, next up is two interchange stations with the Kwun Tong line: both have the usual Hong Kong setup of cross platform interchange with favoured directions. Passengers change at Yau Tong if coming to/from the Kwun Tong line and the Island Line, or change at Tiu Keng Leng if coming to/from the Kwun Tong line and the far end of the Tseung Kwan O Line. Wikipedia has a diagram showing exactly what is going on in the tangle of tunnels:

They also have a nice geographically accurate map of the line:

Beyond the interchange stations, the line continues to Tseung Kwan O which is another bog-standard station, then does a very non-Hong Kong thing and divides into two branches. The line towards LOHAS Park and Tseung Kwan O Depot is considered the branch, with the line to Po Lam the mainline. During peak times trains from North Point serve both termini, but off peak all trains from North Point run to Po Lam, with LOHAS Park receiving a shuttle service. These shuttle trains run as far as Tiu Keng Leng, then disappear into a siding between the main lines, then form a train in the opposite direction. The choice of terminus for the shuttle is rather smart, as it enables an interchange with the Kwun Tong if desired, if it only ran to Tseung Kwan O even more changes of trains would be required.

Despite being considered the “branch” line, LOHAS Park station has two platforms while Po Lam is one of the few single platform termini in Hong Kong (the others are the Asia World Expo and Disneyland Resort stations).

LOHAS Park:

Po Lam: due to the single platform configuration the concourse is on the same level, enabling passengers to walk off a train and out onto the street:

So that’s everything of interest on this line: the full set of photos is here, so now that you have seen everything I’d recommend spending your time anywhere else when you visit HK (unless you are a trackbasher and want to get every station…)

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