History
Nam Cheong Station was called Yen Chow Street Station (after Yen Chow Street, a major thoroughfare in the area) in its planning stage. The station was subsequently renamed "Nam Cheong" after Nam Cheong Estate, a nearby public housing estate, which in turn is named after Nam Cheong Street (another thoroughfare). Nam Cheong Street was named after Mr. Chan Nam Cheong (陳南昌), a local philanthropist. As "Nam Cheong" is also the Cantonese-based transliteration for Nanchang, some sources mistakenly state that the station was named after the mainland Chinese city.
Works for Nam Cheong Station started on October 5, 2000, and was built by a joint venture formed by Balfour Beatty and Zen Pacific. The station was opened for public use on December 16, 2003, coinciding with the pre-opening charity trial run day of the KCR West Rail (now West Rail Line), and the Tung Chung Line part of the station started operation. On December 20, the KCR West Rail officially commenced operation, and Nam Cheong became the southern terminus of the rail line.
Upon its completion, the station was a share-used integrated station between MTR and KCR. The station concourse was divided into 2 parts (managed by the 2 rail operators respectively). Special transfer turnstiles were located between the 2 parts, enabling passengers paying with Octopus card to interchange between the 2 systems with just tapping the card once.
The operations of MTR and KCR merged on December 2, 2007, and the management of the station unified under MTR. Following the network-wide fare zone merger of the former MTR and KCR networks on September 28, 2009, the transfer turnstiles along with the barriers separating the two fare zones were removed, and cross-platform interchange is now provided between platform 1 (West Rail Line to Tuen Mun) and platform 4 (Tung Chung Line to Hong Kong) thanks to the new passageways opened between the 2 platforms. One of the wider passages is aligned with the fifth and sixth carriages of the Hong Kong bound trains on the Tung Chung Line side.
The Kowloon Southern Link (extension of West Rail Line) opened on August 16, 2009, and the West Rail Line was extended to Hung Hom on that day. Nam Cheong lost its status as the southern terminus of West Rail Line, and became an intermediate station for both Tung Chung and West Rail lines.
Read more about this topic: Nam Cheong Station
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