Germany's Railway Network Halts Due to Communications System Outage

A problem with a communications system forced Germany’s railway network to halt all trains late Tuesday, leaving passengers stranded across the country. Trains were held at stations and would-be travellers stood in long queues at information desks as they tried to figure out how to get to their destinations. The main national railway operator, Deutsche Bahn, said shortly before 1am – nearly 2½ hours after it first reported the outage – that the problem had been resolved and service was resuming “step by step”. The company said there was a nationwide problem with the GSM-R digital communication system, which is used for internal communication on the railway network. It later said that the cause had been identified, but did not specify what it was. The Bild newspaper quoted Deutsche Bahn CEO Evelyn Palla as saying that they “were able to stabilise the situation with an emergency system”. Deutsche Bahn said during the outage that it was giving taxi and hotel vouchers to passengers and, where possible, making available trains at stations for travellers to sit in. It apologised for the situation.