All Yellow Line wheel bearings to be replaced

Operator reacts to security concerns after a monorail train roller fell.

All Yellow Line wheel bearings to be replaced
At its main workshop in Bangkok’s Prawet district on Thursday, BTS Group Holdings chairman Keeree Kanjanapas (center ) talks about safety precautions for the Yellow Line rail system. Eastern Bangkok Monorail Co. ( Photo )

To ensure public safety, the president of the rail operator announced on Thursday that the ball joints on the tires of all Golden Series trains may be replaced.

According to Keeree Kanjanapas, chairman of Eastern Bangkok Monorail Co Ltd., Alstom Thailand, the maker of the tires used on the Yellow Line trains, will remove all the ball bearings with items from fresh loads.

While inspecting coach repair at the state’s station, Mr. Keeree stated that Alstom workers had so far examined 600 of the 1, 080 wheels on the 30 Golden Series trains.

To ensure security, he added that preservation would also be scheduled more frequently.

The commitment came after a Golden Series train’s manual wheel fell from its elevated trail on Thepharak Road in Samut Prakan on Tuesday night. A car was struck by the bouncing vehicle. No single suffered any harm.

The rail operator attributed the incident to a broken wheel ball bearing. Mr. Keeree apologized for the event on Thursday.

The Yellow and Pink Lines, the nation’s first two monorail systems that serve the outer areas of Bangkok and nearby provincial areas, have been subjected to a thorough inspection by the Thailand Consumer Council (TCC ) in the meantime.

Questions have been raised about whether problems occurred during systems assembly on the two ranges in light of two new errors, it said.

A part of the Pink Line’s wire bridge broke free from its frame on December 24 and fell onto a city, causing damage to some parked cars along Tiwanon Road in Nonthaburi. The event led to the line’s solutions being suspended.

According to the TCC in a statement posted on its website, both occurrences have raised safety issues.

The situations appear to have been the first of their kind on a rail system anywhere in the world, according to Assoc Prof. Chalie Charoenlarpnopparut, an architect and part of the TCC sub-committee on travel and cars.

North Bangkok Monorail Co. is the controller of the Pink Line. The business and Eastern Bangkok Monorail are affiliates of BSR JV Consortium, a partnership between the three major energy producers Ratch Group, Sino-Thai Engineering and Construction, and BTS Group Holdings, which owns 75 % of the business.

Mr. Keeree also serves as the chairman of BTS Group Holdings and a producer of the Pink Line controller, which runs the city’s first and busiest mass-transit rail line, known as MTS Skytrain.