The fault keeps the Britomart train line closed until Friday morning

Auckland’s busiest train station will be closed until Friday morning, KiwiRail says.

Auckland Transport announced this morning that a track failure had occurred near Britomart train station and alerted public transport users at 5.45am of the disruptions.

This afternoon, KiwiRail COO Todd Moyle said the station will only reopen tomorrow morning.

“KiwiRail staff have been on site all morning and work is underway to repair the track faults,” Moyle said.

“We anticipate that the line to Britomart will be closed today, but will reopen tomorrow morning. More work will be done on Friday night to fully complete the work.”

The track failure was related to “extensive” work being carried out to repair some 100 kilometers of degraded railway on the Auckland network.

“KiwiRail was already aware of the faults near Britomart and had planned to deal with them during a future temporary shutdown,” Moyle said.

“However, routine monitoring of the site last night revealed that rolling contact fatigue (cracks caused by pressure on the rail from passing trains) was significant enough to repair immediately.”

He apologized to the public transport users affected by the disruptions and assured them that his team was working around the clock.

“No maintenance job has a higher priority than this project in Auckland,” Moyle said.

“We thank the travelers and neighbors for their patience as this urgent work continues.”

All train services heading to Britomart will stop at Newmarket and replacement services are operating between the two stations.

“The Onehunga line is canceled between Britomart and Penrose,” said Auckland Transport.

“There are train replacement buses between Newmarket and Britomart.”