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Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

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Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#81

Post by gib444 »

section_me wrote: post #66
OJFord wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. OP isn't saying it's necessarily malicious interference though.

The UK buys most of their trains from Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) and just brands them differently. British person living in Berlin.

> The UK buys most of their trains from Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) and just brands them differently.

This is totally incorrect.

We buy our trains from French/Swiss/German/Spanish/Belgian manufacturers, or build them ourselves in eg Derby.

We do not buy our trains from DB.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#82

Post by mcbetz »

dgellow wrote: post #13

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

In Erfurt since 2,5 hours. Out of office train driver keeps us updated from chats with fellow drivers (their sources say it is due to software update), radio is fixed now and trains processed one after another (starting with super fast ones - Munich > Berlin, e.g. - so the tracks get emptied quickly). Other interesting observations: when our train stopped, all hotels were already fully booked, as were coach tickets (Flixbus) that would run in the early morning. Crazy how fast people react to shocks.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#83

Post by desertrider12 »

okanat wrote: post #75
desertrider12 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’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.

I would get out and look for a hotel before all of them get sold out. Probably tomorrow too.

Luckily: Update from announcer is that trains can start again at 12:25 AM and they reduced our delay by 30 minutes. But there’s still a huge line of riders at the DB service desk.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#84

Post by wolfi1 »

Blahah wrote: post #42
OJFord wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. OP isn't saying it's necessarily malicious interference though.

Not a stretch to imagine that it is though. Germany has some very effective radical vandals who make statements by interrupting infrastructure.

could still be incompetence, one newspaper says an update has gone wrong

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#85

Post by jtwaleson »

dgellow wrote: post #13

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

I was at a conference in Frankfurt, traveling back to Amsterdam with my cofounder and got stuck in Oberhausen. We have an early flight tomorrow and there's no trains in NL due to a strike tomorrow morning, so we decided to take an uber home.

At first the delay was 30 minutes. Then 2 hours. After 1h30 with zero updates we decided to bail. Just checked and nothing is moving yet, so we made the right call.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#86

Post by PLenz »

sc11 wrote: post #11
ratio53 wrote: post #7

I wonder how they managed to tell trains to stop.

Signalling 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

That depends, cab signaling for example needs radio to work

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#87

Post by okanat »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #79
okanat wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to spend at least 3x that and they need to bring redundant workforce to fix Germany. It is completely broken now.

> They need to spend at least 3x that According to whom?

Look at how much Switzerland spends per capita vs Germany. €477 vs €115. And Swiss kept their infrastructure well unlike Germans.

source: https://www.allianz-pro-schiene.de/themen/infrastruktur/inve...

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#88

Post by eqvinox »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #80
eqvinox wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For context, in case people are less familiar with German politics: DB is in a misbegotten state of privatization, started in the 90ies. The government spun it out into a private company but still owns 100% of it. They were trying to pump it up so they could sell it for good money. They did that by skimping on everything including maintenance, to try and make the numbers look good. Except they never got to whatever m…

> Not sure if this is better or worse than the UK's Network Rail story “About 72 per cent of Deutsche Bahn’s intercity trains arrived within 10 minutes of their scheduled arrival time in the year to January 2025, compared with 78 per cent of British long-distance trains, according to the FT analysis. Any interaction with the German rail network is also one of the biggest factors affecting the punctuality of long-dist…

The UK's railway network was only privately owned from 1994 to 2002 though, everything after that is already under the umbrella of re-nationalisation, which didn't go super well either (my knowledge about that is rather vague). Not sure how useful 2025 numbers are in this context.

[ed.: to be clear - AFAIK they are in the same state currently, private company but 100% government owned. But there's a huge distinction in that the UK has made the decision to move back in the direction of nationalisation. In Germany, some people still pretend this is somehow fine and just needs to get cleaned up before the privatization can continue.]

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#89

Post by mschuster91 »

lyu07282 wrote: post #10

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

Current 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.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#90

Post by SiempreViernes »

ahartmetz wrote: post #77
section_me wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK buys most of their trains from Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) and just brands them differently. British person living in Berlin.

Deutsche Bahn doesn't manufacture rolling stock. They buy it from Siemens, Stadler, Talgo, Alstom etc... Edit: AFAIK, some of it - mainly high-speed trains - is designed according to DB specs and subsequently offered under a new name (and with changes) to other train companies. For example DB ICE 3 (manufactured by Siemens) / Siemens Velaro.

You can probably buy some of the older rolling stock from DB thought.
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