A disruption in the digital radio network temporarily brought rail traffic across Germany to a standstill overnight into Wednesday. "No train service nationwide," Deutsche Bahn announced on Tuesday evening. According to CEO Evelyn Palla, company technicians managed to temporarily resolve the problem using an "emergency system." Trains gradually resumed service early Wednesday morning.
"Due to a nationwide outage of the digital rail radio system GSM-R, all trains are being held at stations," the company stated in its initial incident report. Shortly afterwards, Deutsche Bahn announced it would issue taxi and hotel vouchers to affected travellers. "Where possible, stationary trains will be made available as waiting areas," it added.
Among those affected were passengers on an ICE service running between Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, who were held at Würzburg station for around three hours, according to an AFP reporter on board. Water and biscuits were distributed, along with forms for reimbursement claims. A train attendant said he had never experienced a disruption of this scale in his 20-year career with Deutsche Bahn. "That it happens sometimes" was not unusual, he said, "but not across the whole of Germany."
Long-distance and regional services were not the only ones affected. S-Bahn urban rail services in several cities, including the capital Berlin, were also brought to a standstill. Passengers were advised to switch to the U-Bahn underground or bus services instead.
Metronom, a private rail operator serving Lower Saxony, Hamburg, and Bremen, also urged its passengers to seek alternative transport. "All trains are standing still and we expect nothing to run tonight," Metronom spokesperson Simon Märtens told AFP on Tuesday evening.
By Wednesday morning, Deutsche Bahn declared the immediate crisis resolved. "Our IT experts worked non-stop on restoring the system, with success," the company said. "Services are now resuming step by step." Speaking to Bild, Deutsche Bahn CEO Evelyn Palla said: "We were able to stabilise the situation using an emergency system." The cause of the failure, she added, "now needs to be investigated."
Metronom warned, however, that disruption across the network would continue. Train services would resume "gradually", with delays and cancellations expected to persist.
According to Metronom, the GSM-R digital radio system is a central communication channel between train drivers and the signal box controllers at the network operator DB InfraGO AG. A failure of this system, it said, represents "an immense safety problem" for rail operations. Bild reported, citing security sources, that a software update may have triggered the radio outage.
The failure comes just ahead of a scheduled meeting of Deutsche Bahn's supervisory board on Wednesday and Thursday, at which CEO Palla is set to present her strategy for the years ahead. Palla, who has led the company since last autumn, has announced far-reaching restructuring plans — most notably a significant streamlining of the corporate headquarters.
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