1. Gali Batu MRT Depot is located along Woodlands Road, at the northern end of the Downtown Line. It is the first MRT depot in Singapore to achieve the certification of BCA Green Mark Gold.
2. The depot is constructed by the joint venture comprising of GS Engineering and Construction Corp. of South Korea and Hock Lian Seng Infrastructure Ltd of Singapore. GS Engineering & Construction Corp. is a South Korean company that has worked on the Seoul Subway Line while Hock Lian Seng Infrastructure Ltd is a local contractor with extensive experience in the construction of both road and rail infrastructure projects.
3. The at-grade depot consists of a seven-storey administration cum workshop building and other ancillary buildings to provide stabling, maintenance, operation and support facilities for the operation of the Downtown Line (DTL). It also houses the Operation Control Centre for the DTL.
4. The depot measures approximately 1.8 kilometres in length and 250 metres in width. The 25-hectare area is equivalent to 38 football fields. It has a stabling capacity of 42 three-car trains. Expansion of the depot is underway to increase the stabling capacity to 81 three-car trains.
5. Built at a cost of about $410 million, the depot took five years to design and build after removing almost 3.9 million cubic metres of earth, including blasting and removal of about 100,000 cubic metres of hard granite rock. The volume of earth excavated is enough to fill more than 1,500 Olympic-size swimming pools.
Operation Control Centre
6. The Operation Control Centre (OCC) serves as the nerve centre for an MRT Line. The OCC Suite is made up mainly of the OCC, Depot Control Centre (DCC), and Training Development Centre (TDC).
7. At the OCC, controllers will be able to monitor, supervise and control operations along the entire DTL line. Controllers will also be able to manage the subsystems and equipment at the stations and depot. These include trains, trackside equipment, power supply, station equipment, communications systems, and passenger information systems.
8. Faults on the DTL will also be flagged to the staff at the OCC. Controllers can then either reset the train system remotely or direct station staff to do so.
9. While the OCC manages the subsystems and equipment on the DTL mainline, the DCC manages the subsystems and equipment within the depot. The TDC houses the training and development system for training of staff.
Automatic Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS)
10. The ASRS is the central warehouse for the DTL, and is used mainly for the storage of materials, equipment and spares necessary for the maintenance of all aspects of the DTL railway.
11. It has a storage capacity of 3,600 pallets and consists of 13-metre-high racking bays on a floor area of 1100 square metres, operated by two automatically rail-guided stacker cranes. These are controlled by a central computer system, which commands and dispatches them to collect and deliver materials and spares from the warehouse and issue directly to the stores.
12. The system is also linked directly to the Maintenance Management System (MMS) and is capable to provide the online stock level to support maintenance needs.
