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German rail operator says train disruption caused by sabotage

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Re: German rail operator says train disruption caused by sabotage

#31

I'm sitting on a train in northern Germany right now. We're invited to a wedding, we were supposed to take a train at 8:45, it is 14:45 now and we're not even halfway there. The whole thing is crazy chaotic because the delayed trains now compete for space on the same train tracks. Too many people are trying to enter the trains so that the trains wait in the individual train stations until the police comes and forces…

I know first hand, normally due to autumnal storms... never reaching and finding hotels full, we ended up sleeping once in the office of a friend.

Re: German rail operator says train disruption caused by sabotage

#33
In case anyone things this has anything to do with the current Russia situation, it most likely has not.

Stuff like that happens every few years on larger scale and sometimes multiple times a year on smaller scale (e.g. part of Berlin local trains not going because of it).

A lot of this sabotage comes from people trying to steal cables, but then also sometimes giving up in the process.

Then there a climate crazed people which in a twisted way blame the trains for partially causing the climate crisis because they are too expensive...

There are also two or three other radicalized movements which in twisted and less twisted ways use the DB as a representative for the "evil state/system" and then jump from there to sabotaging the train service, not limited to the DB (sounds stupid? it is, but happens anyway).

The only thing special in this case is how many lines had been affected, not that it happened.

Re: German rail operator says train disruption caused by sabotage

#34

Maybe I am tinfoiling too hard... In February this year there was an attack against Vodafone Portugal that brought down their whole mobile networks, 4G, 5G, and fiber, taking them several days to bring everything back up [0]. It also very clearly was a state actor, no threats, no ransom, sophisticated. Taking down pipelines, taking down comms, taking down transport infrastructure. All within a few months. Always on N…

Here in north-east Poland we're quite used to it. The most frequent are GPS spoofing and lte jamming.

Its not like they even try to hide their location or anything.

If I was to put my tinfoil hat on I would say those current attacks concentrate on Germany because due to long standing influence of Russians on German politics German's political class is a de-facto ally of Russia (against the will of its own population). Those attack's purpose is to scare ordinary Germans into letting their politicians continue pretend they help while they continue doing all in their power to help Putin's regime(or its equivalent under a different name).

Re: German rail operator says train disruption caused by sabotage

#35

In case anyone things this has anything to do with the current Russia situation, it most likely has not. Stuff like that happens every few years on larger scale and sometimes multiple times a year on smaller scale (e.g. part of Berlin local trains not going because of it). A lot of this sabotage comes from people trying to steal cables, but then also sometimes giving up in the process. Then there a climate crazed peo…

Cables in both Berlin and Dortmund were severed around the same time. This smells of a larger, coordinated oepration.

Re: German rail operator says train disruption caused by sabotage

#36
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not, especially on the weekend. The freight delays might be somewhat of an issue over the next few days but on the passenger side it's a mild inconvenience at best. It disrupted the rail network country-wide to some degree but the public rail infrastructure in Germany isn't really known for it's reliability anyway.

German rail not known for its reliability... really?! Perhaps not in Germany. But in most other countries, German rail is perceived to be very reliable. And compared to rail in most other countries, German rail is very reliable!

Compared to e.g. Japan and some other countries long distance trains in Germany are _very_ unreliable.

Compared to some other countries it is extremely reliable.

Local train service reliability differs quite a bit depending on region and sometimes in region which exact train you take.

And perception of reliability can differ from reality, e.g. Berlin people always complain about how unreliable their public transportation is, but due to high frequency of the transportation and a tight nitted 3-4 layer transportation net it is in effect really not that bad. Sure there are a few places where you e.g. reliable miss a follow up connection. But you can calculate that in and with delay times included it is still better then what you find in many other places in the word. So uh, perception is it's a catastrophe, but practice is it's far behind Tokio but not that bad at all in general (for most connections).

Re: German rail operator says train disruption caused by sabotage

#39

In case anyone things this has anything to do with the current Russia situation, it most likely has not. Stuff like that happens every few years on larger scale and sometimes multiple times a year on smaller scale (e.g. part of Berlin local trains not going because of it). A lot of this sabotage comes from people trying to steal cables, but then also sometimes giving up in the process. Then there a climate crazed peo…

Cables in both Berlin and Dortmund were severed around the same time. This smells of a larger, coordinated oepration.

Yes there are bunch of crazy people doing this stuff coordinated.

Lookup letzte generation.

There are probably others, I’m not really following it too close.

Re: German rail operator says train disruption caused by sabotage

#40
post #34

Maybe I am tinfoiling too hard... In February this year there was an attack against Vodafone Portugal that brought down their whole mobile networks, 4G, 5G, and fiber, taking them several days to bring everything back up [0]. It also very clearly was a state actor, no threats, no ransom, sophisticated. Taking down pipelines, taking down comms, taking down transport infrastructure. All within a few months. Always on N…

Here in north-east Poland we're quite used to it. The most frequent are GPS spoofing and lte jamming. Its not like they even try to hide their location or anything. If I was to put my tinfoil hat on I would say those current attacks concentrate on Germany because due to long standing influence of Russians on German politics German's political class is a de-facto ally of Russia (against the will of its own population)…

I don't buy that theory. First of all: outside of the party "Die Linke" and the left wing of the SPD, there's little ideological friendship to Russia in German politics, it's either regular corruption (Gerhard Schröder) or industrial politics ("you give us cheap energy, we keep our eyes closed and don't mention the smell"). If anything, actions like these will make Germans more willing to spend extra money on defense, suffer during the shift to different energy providers, and support Ukraine.

As it's usually the case with these events, it's easy to find motives if you discount the possibility of being caught. The US might do it for the reasons I mentioned. The German govt might do it to make the population more willing to follow orders. Some anti-capitalist group might do it because ... idk, trains are evil (they've been sabotaging mostly local trains in/around Berlin in the past decade or so, but they typically claim their actions, so we'll see). The DB might be behind it to get more money to upgrade & secure their infrastructure.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't me, but everyone else has a motive.

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