BERLIN (AP) — A failure in a critical communications system brought Germany’s entire rail network to a standstill late Tuesday evening, leaving passengers stuck at stations throughout the country.
The nation’s primary rail operator, Deutsche Bahn, announced that all trains were being held in place due to a nationwide outage affecting the GSM-R digital communications system — a network used for internal coordination across the railway.
About an hour and a half after first reporting the issue, Deutsche Bahn released a statement at midnight saying the root cause had been pinpointed, though the company did not reveal what had gone wrong. The statement noted that technicians “are working intensively on a solution.”
The company did not indicate how long repairs might take, nor did it provide figures on how many trains or travelers were impacted.
According to the Bild newspaper, Deutsche Bahn CEO Evelyn Palla stated that “we are now trying to get the trains into stations so that travelers can disembark.”
Deutsche Bahn said it would provide affected passengers with taxi and hotel vouchers and, when possible, allow travelers to wait inside trains parked at stations. The company issued an apology for the disruption.
GSM-R — which stands for Global System for Mobile Communications–Railway — provides the voice and data services essential to running a rail network, including direct communication between train operators and control centers.
The European Union Agency for Railways notes that the system has been rolled out across Europe since 2000 as a unified standard for rail operations.
While Germany’s rail network has occasionally suspended all or most service in the past, those instances were typically caused by severe storms rather than technical failures.
