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Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem
- hdgvhicv 4mo agoCan passengers tell, I thought German trains were always disrupted!
- mmoll 4mo agoIt is telling that I thought “that’s why all trains were late this afternoon” before I realized that the issue occurred only minutes ago.
- moffkalast 4mo agoIt'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 4mo agoIf 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.
- hobofan 4mo agoProbably someone forgot to renew the TLS certificate.
- gpvos 4mo agoYou may not be far off. Word is that it's a failed software update.
- gruselhaus 4mo agoMy 100 bucks are on an expired certificate in the trust chain. the same kind of issue that took down almost all Verifone payment terminals in Germany in 2022.
- Bluebirt 4mo agoYou mean neglect?
- thih9 4mo agoNeglect is basically unscheduled maintenance.
- 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 4mo agoNeglect is basically scheduled unmaintenance.
- gpvos 4mo agoThirty years of it.
- ed_balls 4mo agoSame thing happened in Poland and it was confirmed that Russians did it.
- thih9 4mo agoDo you have a link? Was it similar to what we’re seeing now (nationwide, radio related)?
- ratio53 4mo agoI wonder how they managed to tell trains to stop.
- sc11 4mo agoSignalling still works, so you can let the trains continue to a safe place like a station and then not let them leave until the radio issue is resolved
- PLenz 4mo agoThat depends, cab signaling for example needs radio to work
- LargoLasskhyfv 4mo agoNot necessarily, at least for some time: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linienförmige_Zugbeeinflussung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linienförmige_Zugbeeinflussung
- Glawen 4mo agoDeutsche Bahn trains stop themselves all the time, no need to tell them
- lxgr 4mo agoStop signals. For legacy train control systems, these still work visually and via wires. ETCS (starting with Level 2) does use GSM-R, but everything is fail-safe: No active communication, no movement authority, so the "virtual signal" display in the cab will pretty quickly also show "stop".
- modinfo 4mo ago"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 https://www.bahn.de/service/fahrplaene/aktuell
- lyu07282 4mo agoHappened 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_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2022_German_railway_at... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM-R https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM-R
- okanat 4mo agoI wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be incompetence at this point.
- sleepybrett 4mo agovibe coding the rail software.
- Etheryte 4mo agoIf you know anything at all about the Deutsche Bahn, you'll know that it's most likely self-sabotage, in other words, incompetence.
- mschuster91 4mo agoCurrent suspicion on the German rails reddit is a software update gone wrong. My personal suspicion, GSM-R is 90s GSM, they'll likely have a fried HLR & VLR because in any GSM network these are fundamental, without them you can't even get roaming from public phone networks working as there is no way for the public network to authenticate GSM-R subscribers.
- ChrisArchitect 4mo agoAP source: https://apnews.com/article/germany-trains-halted-communications-radio-problem-deutsche-bahn-e8fd970b2d889f3ae7ce03322d5c726b https://apnews.com/article/germany-trains-halted-communicati...
- sva_ 4mo ago@dang please update if you see this And merge with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48651613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48651613
- dgellow 4mo agoAny HNer blocked in a DB train who can share with us the experience?
- gpvos 4mo agoThe same as usual I suppose: stopped at a station in a tiny village, without any information. Train staff will provide water, but that's about it.
- desertrider12 4mo agoI’m sitting in an ICE in Munich that was supposed to leave a few minutes before I saw this story on HN. First the conductor announced a 30 minute delay because the radio wasn’t working, and then they bumped it to 2 hours. They didn’t say it was a systemwide problem.
- okanat 4mo agoI would get out and look for a hotel before all of them get sold out. Probably tomorrow too.
- 4mo ago
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- dgellow 4mo agoDuplicate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48651552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48651552
- fhdkweig 4mo agoand submitted by the same user sva_ https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=sva_ https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=sva_
- gus_massa 4mo agoThe other article is only one sentence long. I guess the OP posted it and later found this that is a better source. (Un)luckily both reached the front page. Usually dang/tomhow will make a cleanup soon to avoid duplication and keep the discussion in a single thread.
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- felooboolooomba 4mo agoThere 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 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gy60gg6k5o
- OJFord 4mo agoMaybe. OP isn't saying it's necessarily malicious interference though.
- Blahah 4mo agoNot a stretch to imagine that it is though. Germany has some very effective radical vandals who make statements by interrupting infrastructure.
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- wolfi1 4mo agocould still be incompetence, one newspaper says an update has gone wrong
- section_me 4mo agoThe UK buys most of their trains from Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) and just brands them differently. British person living in Berlin.
- gpvos 4mo agoIncorrect. They wouldn't fit in the tiny UK loading gauge (profile). UK trains are indeed variants of continental models, but made to custom size, and many (most?) of them in the UK.
- 4mo ago
- ripbozo 4mo agoWord 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
- segmondy 4mo agoAI vibes all the place!
- tormeh 4mo agoEverything I've ever heard about railway and train software suggests AI cannot possibly make things any worse than they already are. Conservatism causes no changes to be possible, which means many changes have to be made via workarounds and virtualization wrappers which cause a giant mess over time which create breakage which creates a conservative culture/laws.
- rurban 4mo agoA planned major update to align with other countries platforms, which other countries did estimate to need 9 years for. So they did have plenty of time to test that update, as well as preparing a fast fallback, in case of not-working.
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- Havoc 4mo agoGee I wonder which country could be behind it
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- d2kx 4mo agoIt's a GSM-R issue. See Tagesschau (German): https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/gesellschaft/deutsche-bahn-stoerung-zugfunk-100.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/gesellschaft/deutsche-bahn-...
- wrs 4mo ago>This special mobile communication standard is designed to make communication fail-safe Mmm, nope.
- ExoticPearTree 4mo agoIf nothing works, eveything is safe, no?
- fhars 4mo agoThat is the point of failing safe. It would me much worse if some of the trains kept running...
- throw7 4mo agoIt's not if nothing works, it's what works when nothing works, i.e. the safe thing must always work. period. (i'm not trying to be pedantic or an ass)
- Ekaros 4mo agoSafe in this kind of context means no property damage or no casualties or no injuries. Not no financial damage. Sometimes repairable property damage is accepted if that is active or passive safety component.
- NamTaf 4mo agoIt did fail safe though? Interference led to the network stopping, not trains just racing towards each other due to bogus line authorities. That is, by definition, fail-safe
- DanielleMolloy 4mo agoDowndetector shows parallel disruption spikes, similar pattern as end of last year, not as widespread yet. https://downdetector.com https://downdetector.com
- lschueller 4mo agoMainly Meta Services, which seem to spike, isn't it? And Google Fiber
- DanielleMolloy 4mo agoA bit more, traderepublic, tiktok, snapchat, X, AWS, CloudFlare https://allestörungen.de/en/ https://xn--allestrungen-9ib.de/en/ These could be based on different scales of numbers since it is midnight in Germany
- lschueller 4mo agoAh, now it's more obvious.. True! Thank you
- lxgr 4mo agoAnd a football world cup game just ended.
- usernametaken29 4mo agoHonestly can’t tell the difference between this and a regular day r/dbsucks
- mfiro 4mo agoIt 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 4mo agoThe 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.
- lxgr 4mo agoVery interesting, I always thought it was completely separate infrastructure by design. I wonder what they'll do once commercial GSM networks throughout Europe are shut down?
- gpvos 4mo agoUpgrade to 4G or 5G.
- lxgr 4mo agoIn the long term, sure, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRMCS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRMCS is some way away, and I doubt they'll upgrade cab radios to 5G for the fallback path alone.
- gpvos 4mo agoI have no idea which is cheaper, upgrading those or paying for one 2G network to remain on (at least enough cell towers to cover the railway network).
- _def 4mo agoSame problem happened two years ago. You'd think that would be enough time to figure out a failsafe routine
- LauraMedia 4mo agoSeems like the failsafe also failed today.
- GJim 4mo agoI think you will find it *did* fail to safe. (To suggest otherwise implies you do not understand what failsafe means!).
- _def 4mo agoGranted, i guess backup is what i meant
- DanielleMolloy 4mo agoDowndetector shows parallel disruption spikes, similar pattern as end of last year, not as widespread yet. https://downdetector.com https://downdetector.com
- pulkitsh1234 4mo agoInteresting, I just took an OBB train today from Zurich to Amsterdam, which passes through a lot of Germany.
- gpvos 4mo agoIts return train is currently stuck at Oberhausen.
- porphyra 4mo agoIs it just me or is the webpage broken with a redirect loop between: * https://www.bluewin.ch/en/news/german-train-service-suspended-due-to-radio-interference-li.3295297 https://www.bluewin.ch/en/news/german-train-service-suspende... * https://www.bluewin.ch/en/news/german-rail-service-suspended-due-to-radio-interference-li.3295297 https://www.bluewin.ch/en/news/german-rail-service-suspended...
- puttycat 4mo agoA truly chaotic week in Europe, alongside the UK train crash and the unprecedented heat wave.
- RetroTechie 4mo agoIt could be chaos on Dutch rail too the coming day. Trimmed down schedule on some of the busiest routes (due to the current heatwave). Add to that a labor union strike on Wednesday June 24 (that's today local time as I write this). Although NL rail travelers are usually quite good at anticipating, and adjust their schedule. So might just be a quieter-than-usual day.
- retired 4mo agoIt helps that 90% of the population can cycle to work if they have to. Remote work is also very big.
- gpvos 4mo agoTrains are being started up again (staggered because the current draw of so many accelerating trains could cause problems) since about 10 minutes past midnight, 30 minutes ago.
- ngruhn 4mo agoIs that news? Sounds like status quo.
- InTheArena 4mo agoThe jet lag team must be in Germany again. Sam, you being deuschbahnned?
- mproud 4mo agoAnyone else watch Season 2 of Hijack?
- LargoLasskhyfv 4mo agoIt's the heat. Some system somewhere in need of cooling. Does not get it, because BAHN. Crapping out. Cascades of disbelief. R2D2-like cybernetic seizures. Endless commuter pleasures. No mischief at all. Just bad techno-thrall...
- LargoLasskhyfv 4mo agoUnexpected summer. A real bummer.
- e-v 4mo agoFor some reason, after reading the title of the article, I immediately thought the culprit was Emacs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33524683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33524683
- yanhangyhy 4mo agohow did germany become this ? i think from my observations, in china, when talk about Germany, the #1 thing is the fucking stupid train system....
- Kirth 4mo agoWas left stranded in Berlin last night trying to get home to a neighboring city, which should have taken 45 minutes (more like 1h20 nowadays due to time tables and whole regional train lines being down for maintenance til EOY). The lack of communication was probably the worst of all. Announcements saying to take alternative means of transport. The DB Navigator app insists that everything is still running and it was impossible to get clear info as to whether RE trains were also affected. Eventually we took a Miles car home and because of this and past unreliability I'm, sadly, thinking about getting a car instead.
- 3997531578 4mo ago[dead]