Kawasaki Heavy Industries & CRRC Qingdao Sifang CT251


The trains manufactured by Kawasaki Heavy Industries & CRRC Qingdao Sifang under Contract T251 are the rolling stock used on Singapore's Thomson–East Coast line.
91 four-car medium-capacity trainsets were purchased by LTA for the Thomson-East Coast line and the first set was delivered on 25 May 2018.

Tender

The tender for trains under the contract turnkey 251 was closed on 15 November 2013 with six bids. The Land Transport Authority has shortlisted all of them and the tender results were published on 28 May 2014.
S/NName of tendererAmount
1Alstom Transport S.A. – Alstom Transport Pte Ltd Consortium954,410,000
2Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd. / Kawasaki Heavy Industries Pte Ltd & CRRC Qingdao Sifang Consortium749,840,000
3Hyundai Rotem765,856,000
4Bombardier Pte Ltd, Bombardier Transportation GmbH & Changchun Bombardier Railway Vehicles Company Ltd Consortium810,179,619
5Construcciones Y Auxilliar De Ferrocarriles, S. A.939,645,996
6CRRC Zhuzhou Locomotive / Siemens Pte Ltd, Singapore Consortium849,623,569

Kawasaki will be responsible for the overall project management, design, manufacturing of bogies and procurement of major components. CRRC Qingdao Sifang will be in charge of manufacturing, final fitting and assembly of complete MRT trains and factory testing. Kawasaki will be responsible for the delivery of complete MRT trains to the depot, on-site testing and commissioning.

Design and features

The CT251 trains will have a new livery of khaki and brown stripes running around the cars, similar to C951 trains, which bear teal and dark blue stripes. They include several features unique to this rolling stock, such as:
Two of the CT251 trains would also be fitted with the automatic track inspection system, comprising cameras, lasers and sensors which would help to detect defects on the tracks, such as rail cracks, missing track-rail fasteners or even foreign objects.

Train formation

The configuration of a CT251 in revenue service is DM1-M-T-DM2.
The car numbers of the trains range from 2001x to 2091x, where x depends on the carriage type. Individual cars are assigned a five-digit serial number. A complete four-car trainset consists of one trailer, one motor car and two driving motor cars permanently coupled together. For example, set 2001 consists of carriages 20011, 20012, 20013 and 20014.
The award of the CT251 turnkey contract to the Kawasaki Heavy Industries & CRRC Qingdao Sifang consortium was briefly politicised in Singapore, when the defects from the relatively new C151A trains constructed by the same consortium were made public on 5 July 2016. This was after Gerald Giam from the Workers Party commenting through an official Facebook post doubting the decision by the Land Transport Authority to awarded the subsequent contracts, specifically both the design and supply of C151C and CT251 rail cars to the same consortium in 2015. This was despite the Land Transport Authority and operator SMRT Trains being officially acknowledged on the C151A crack defects as early as 2013.