West Rail line
Railway line in Hong Kong
The West Rail line (Chinese: 西鐵綫) (formerly known as KCR West Rail from 20 December 2003 to 2 December 2007) was a commuter rail / rapid transit line that formed part of the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) system in Hong Kong until 27 June 2021. Coloured magenta on the MTR map, the line ran from Tuen Mun to Hung Hom, with a total length of 35.7 kilometres (22.2 mi), in 37 minutes. The railway connected the urban area of Kowloon and the new towns of Yuen Long, Tin Shui Wai and Tuen Mun in the northwestern New Territories.
The line was the second of three lines built and operated by the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation (KCRC), then known as the KCR West Rail (九廣西鐵). It was designed to suburban rail standards similar to that of KCR's first line, now the East Rail line, anticipating freight and intercity services to mainland China, although the latter role was ultimately superseded by the Guangzhou–Shenzhen–Hong Kong Express Rail Link Hong Kong section as part of the China Railway High-speed network.
After KCRC's merger of operations with the MTR Corporation on 2 December 2007, the West Rail line was operated as part of the MTR network. Along with the Ma On Shan line, the line was integrated into the Tuen Ma line in June 2021 upon the completion of Phase 1 of the Sha Tin to Central Link.
History
Planning
A railway to the northwestern New Territories from the urban area in Kowloon was recommended as early as 1978 in a Tuen Mun Transport Study by Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick & Partner; by the early 1990s, the surge of commuter towns in Yuen Long and Tuen Mun had frequently brought road networks to a standstill, as urban populations spilled over to the bedroom communities while keeping their jobs in Kowloon and Hong Kong Island.
The 1994 Hong Kong Government Railway Development Strategy report envisaged a domestic passenger service between the Northwestern New Territories (NWNT) and urban Kowloon, a cross-boundary passenger service for passengers travelling between Hong Kong and mainland China, and container freight transport between ports in mainland China and Hong Kong.
In January 1995, the Government invited the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation (KCRC) to submit a proposal for the design, construction and operation of the proposed Western Corridor Railway.
The public source identifies “West Rail line” as railway line in Hong Kong. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around West, Rail and line.
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This entry incorporates text from “West Rail line” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.