Germany’s rail network brought to standstill amid IT maintenance

Germany’s rail network ground to a halt late on Tuesday as a result of maintenance work that went wrong, leaving hundreds of thousands of passengers unable to get home as the national operator faced widespread criticism over the chaos. The Deutsche Bahn (DB) meltdown was initially thought to have been caused by a cyber-attack, but it later emerged that it was likely to have been triggered by a scheduled attempt to replace an ageing component in the railway’s internal communication network, without which the trains are unable to run. Trains were brought to an abrupt halt as a precaution, leaving many stuck on tracks far between stops or standing in stations. Passenger and freight trains were affected. A system reset was carried after two hours, in the early hours of Wednesday, but undoing the chaos took much longer. The railway operator delivered a grovelling apology on Wednesday. “We are analysing the exact cause of the disruption meticulously and with the highest priority, to ensure that the same problem can’t recur,” said Philipp Nagl, the chief executive of DB InfraGO, the state-owned company responsible for railway infrastructure. “Currently it appears the cause of yesterday’s disruption to the GSM-R digital radio system was the planned replacement of a technical component.” The nationwide chaos comes on the back of years of mounting problems with the railway, including frequent delays, cancellations and interruptions. …