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 676 metres long and serves 7 stations. All stations are underground. It runs from Old Centre and ends at either Glass Hall Tower or City Edge. Trains arrive at a frequency of 30 seconds during peak hours and 90 seconds during off-peak hours. All trains run on a four-car formation.

History
Back in June 2020, plans were made to begin linking the western districts to the Old City and New City regions. A plan to use a heavy rail line to do so was then founded 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 25 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 and Aquarium Outlook stations, was already completed and the buildings mentioned earlier were ready to reopen.

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 (ER5) interchange 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 ends at Glass Hall Tower, but commuters can alight and move to Platform C for train service to City Edge. Furthermore, Two-Arm Point is the deepest station on the line, because it is situated directly underneath the New Kensington Cruise Centre and its marine bay. Thus, Two-Arm Point station still remains the most complex station to be built.

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.

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.