Western-Marine Line

The Western-Marine Line is a medium capacity, heavy rail line on the New Kensington City Metro. Coloured blue on the map, the line is 821 metres long and serves eight stations. All stations are underground. Trains arrive at a frequency of 30 seconds during peak hours and 90 seconds during off-peak hours. Northern Branch trains assume a three-car formation with a second-generation monorail rolling stock while all other branch trains assume a four-car formation with a first-generation monorail rolling stock.

## History

Back in June 2020, plans were made to begin linking the western districts to the Old City (now Gateway) and New City (now Downtown) regions. A suggestion to use a heavy rail line to do so was then proposed in late-June 2020. After multiple studies on how to route the stations and position the lines were completed, the blueprint for the Western-Marine Line was complete in early-July 2020.

Construction began on 23 July 2020 with tunneling works stating first. Areas underneath buildings such as the Ecology Building and the Aquarius Corp HQ had to be cleared, which forced the buildings to close down. However, just three days later, on 26 July 2020, Stage 1 of the Western-Marine Line, consisting of only Old Centre (now Harmony Junction) and Aquarium Outlook (now Frontière) stations, was already completed and the buildings above were ready to open.

A hiatus on the works on Stages 2 and 3 of the line was owing to tests done on the first stage to ensure that the line was functioning properly. After tests were completed and the line proved its efficiency to be up to standards, tunneling works continued to extend the line further south to stations Tour Épaisse and Curve Waterfront, which were part of Stages 2 and 3 respectively.

Stage 2, which only consisted of Tour Épaisse station, and Stage 3, which only consisted of Curve Waterfront station were ready to open, with the former opening on 1 August 2020, and the latter opening one day later on 2 August 2020.

Then again, another hiatus on the line extension came into place. The New Kensington Transport Authority was working on other lines such as the Peak Aviation and Central lines at the same time, thus, explaining the hiatus. Furthermore, Stage 4 of the Western-Marine Line was expected to be the biggest stage of the line, consisting of three stations, of which one had a complicated layout.

A week before the opening of Stage 4, extensive tunneling and digging works were put into place for the three upcoming stations, beginning with Two-Arm Point (now Westwater Bay) station. Two-Arm Point station did not serve as a line-to-line interchange, but rather a service interchange. By default, train service from Old Centre would end at Glass Hall Tower (now Central station), but commuters can alight and move to Platform C for train service to City Edge (now Millenia) station. Furthermore, Two-Arm Point is the deepest station on the line, because it is situated directly underneath the New Kensington Cruise Centre and Westwater Bay. Thus, Two-Arm Point station still remains as one of the most complex stations to have been built in the system.

After Two-Arm Point station was completed, workers moved on to Glass Hall Tower and City Edge stations. Due to the more compact sizes of the two stations' Western-Marine line platforms as compared to their Central line ones, it was relatively tougher to layout the tracks and platforms as compared to standard metro stations.

Finally, after a week of extensive work, the Western-Marine Line was officially complete on 29 August 2020 as Stage 4 opened.

The line was further extended to Harrington (now Jarvis) station and extension works were completed on 20 November 2020.

## Trivia

* As New Kensington City Metro stations all follow a method for designating station codes: the first letter of the first syllabus of the line name being the first letter of the station code and the first letter of the second syllabus of the line name being the second letter of the station code, Western-Marine Line stations should be using the code "WM" followed by the station number. However, the line was originally named the "Eastern River Line", in which "Eastern" in the name was owing to a geographical error. After the line name was corrected and enhanced, stations still retained their original station codes.
	+ This was changed later in June 2021, where the official line abbreviation was switched to "WM".
	+ The line abbreviation was altered again to return back to "ER" in October 2022 in recognition of the famous geographical error in the line's original name.
* Harrington Branch stations retain the prefix "CE", as the branch was originally the City Edge branch (serving only City Edge station, which is now Millenia station).
* Services 1 & 2 (the Northern Branch services) use second-generation monorails as their rolling stock. The other 5 services are served by the legacy first-generation monorails.