Germany rail network comes to complete halt nationwide due to IT malfunction
German rail company Deutsche Bahn had to pause its train services across the country due to a nationwide IT disruption on Tuesday night.
All its trains were held at stations following a malfunction with the country's digital railway radio network, causing widespread disruption.
Deutsche Bahn later said the disruption had been fixed after trains were at a complete standstill for more than two-and-a-half hours.
"Our IT experts worked tirelessly to resolve the issue – successfully. The disruption was quickly fixed, and service is now gradually resuming," it said. "We thank all passengers for their patience," it added.
At 22:30 local time (21:30 BST), Deutsche Bahn said a nationwide disruption of the Global System for Mobile Communication for Railways (GSM-R) meant that all trains were being held at stations.
In a followup statement, Deutsche Bahn then said the cause of the disruption, which had affected internal communication channels, "has now been identified" and technicians were working "diligently to resolve the issue".
Passengers were urged to find alternative modes of transport with major delays and cancellations expected.
At the time, Deutsche Bahn did not say how long the disruption could last or how many trains and passengers had been affected.
Speaking to the German newspaper Bild earlier, Deutsche Bahn CEO Evelyn Palla said "we are now trying to get the trains into stations so that travellers can disembark", according to Germany's international broadcaster Deutsche Welle.
GSM-R, which was at the centre of the disruption, is a wireless communication tool used between train drivers and traffic control centres.
Deutsche Bahn apologised to passengers for the situation, adding it would give taxi and hotel vouchers to affected passengers.
It also said it would offer replacement transport where possible.
The national railway operator Deutsche Bahn provides both long-distance and regional transport.
It also operates S-Bahn trains that connect suburbs with city centres, which came to a halt on Tuesday evening as well.
S-Bahn Berlin issued a separate statement that said the outage to the GSMR "has been resolved", and that "S-Bahn trains can run again".
"Please still expect that there may be delays and train cancellations on lines", it added.
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