Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

hdgvhicv

Can passengers tell, I thought German trains were always disrupted!

moffkalast

It's either that or starlink, some railroads in Germany go through areas without any mobile network signal. Think about how crazy that is in 2026 when everything expects everyone to be online 24/7/365.

mmoll

If this weren’t Deutsche Bahn, I’d say it’s a cyber attack. Given that this is Deutsche Bahn, though, it may just as well be a maintenance issue.

ratio53

I wonder how they managed to tell trains to stop.

modinfo

"IT Outage: No train service nationwide. Due to a nationwide outage of the GSMR digital rail radio system, all trains are being held at stations. We are working around the clock to resolve the issue. Our technicians are working around the clock to resolve the outage. Please continue to check your travel connection immediately before departure using the travel information service at bahn.de, the DB Navigator app, or by calling the travel information hotline at 030/2970." https://www.bahn.de/service/fahrplaene/aktuell

lyu07282

Happened before at a smaller scale, crazy high redundancies in GSM-R mean this is likely sabotage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2022_German_railway_at... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM-R

ChrisArchitect

AP source: https://apnews.com/article/germany-trains-halted-communicati...

dgellow

Any HNer blocked in a DB train who can share with us the experience?

dgellow

Duplicate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48651552

felooboolooomba

There was also a very peculiar train crash in the UK just a few days ago. A train hit a stationary train. That shouldn't really happen in this day and age. Sabotage was the first thing that came to my mind. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gy60gg6k5o

ripbozo

Word on the german bahn reddit seems to be that a buggy software update is the cause. Remains to be seen if this is the real cause

Havoc

Gee I wonder which country could be behind it

d2kx

It's a GSM-R issue. See Tagesschau (German): https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/gesellschaft/deutsche-bahn-...

DanielleMolloy

Downdetector shows parallel disruption spikes, similar pattern as end of last year, not as widespread yet. https://downdetector.com

usernametaken29

Honestly can’t tell the difference between this and a regular day r/dbsucks

mfiro

It doesn’t surprise me at all. Deutsche Bahn got so bad in the recent years that Switzerland started turning some German trains around at Basel (border) to protect its own timetable from DB delays.

gpvos

The fallback for GSM-R is the normal GSM network, but according to informed guesses I've read, the handsets still need to authenticate using their GSM-R credentials (it's just normal GSM roaming), and that's failing too.

DanielleMolloy

Downdetector shows parallel disruption spikes, similar pattern as end of last year, not as widespread yet. https://downdetector.com

_def

Same problem happened two years ago. You'd think that would be enough time to figure out a failsafe routine

pulkitsh1234

Interesting, I just took an OBB train today from Zurich to Amsterdam, which passes through a lot of Germany.