All services on East Japan Railway's busy Yamanote Line in Tokyo were suspended Friday morning due to wire trouble, before being resumed later in the day.
The inner loop service, in which trains run counterclockwise, resumed operations at around 7 a.m., while the outer loop service, which operates clockwise, resumed services around 8:25 a.m. But the number of trains was reduced, affecting some 197,000 passengers.
According to JR East, a Yamanote Line train conductor reported Thursday night that sparks were seen flying from a pantograph.
In response, JR East conducted an inspection and found abnormalities in 21 of the 50 Yamanote Line trains. The company stopped the outer circle service from around 9:50 p.m. until the last train of the day.
During the restoration work, JR East discovered that an auxiliary overhead wire was broken near Shinbashi Station.
Shinagawa Station was crowded with passengers Friday morning due to the train suspensions.
A 30-year-old company worker was worried he might not arrive on time for work in the Shinjuku district.
A mother, 42, was rushing to get her 5-year-old daughter to a meeting point for a kindergarten excursion. "I want to hurry because my daughter gets unwell in crowded places," she said, adding that she plans to use JR East's Keihin-Tohoku Line instead.
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