Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem • Hacker News Board

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#201

Post by wrs » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 2:43 AM UTC

cyberax wrote: post #144

wrs wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a fail-safe interpretation of communication: if there is no communication, stop the train. But that's a special case. GSM-R is much more than line authorities. >GSM-R is a secure platform for voice and data communication between railway operational staff, including drivers, dispatchers, shunting team members, train engineers, and station controllers. Designing the communication network itself in such…

"Fail-safe" by definition means that the system fails into a safe state. Stopping the trains on comms failure _is_ safe.

Agreed. What happened to everything else on comms failure?

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#202

Post by gib444 » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 7:43 AM UTC

dcel wrote: post #188

gib444 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Max line speed of HS2 is 360km/h, with provision for 400 in some sections in future. That's already been reduced to 320 km/h under this year's "HS2 reset". Which I imagine in reality will be 300 km/h normally at most, with even lower speeds seen day to day Interestingly the written report to the government stated "However, no railway in the UK, or globally, is currently engineered for 360 kph". Are you incorrect or…

The messaging, in general, has been abysmal. But capacity and speed are not separate concerns. Consistently high average speeds increase capacity - I wish this had been actually communicated.

> The messaging, in general, has been abysmal

Indeed, which has eroded trust. That along with huge cost revisions, you can see why some people are incredibly pessimistic about the entire project

It was all planned lies: high speed rail is sexy. It sold the project.

> Consistently high average speeds increase capacity - I wish this had been actually communicated.

Show us the numbers then ;) And the cost benefit of higher speed vs longer stations and trains

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#203

Post by rurban » Sat, Jun 27, 2026, 4:42 PM UTC

ripbozo wrote: post #23

Word 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

A 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.