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

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#51

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 10:04 PM UTC

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.

[deleted]

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#52

Post by _def » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 10:05 PM UTC

Same problem happened two years ago. You'd think that would be enough time to figure out a failsafe routine

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#53

Post by sva_ » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 10:06 PM UTC

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #12

AP source: https://apnews.com/article/germany-trains-halted-communicati...

@dang please update if you see this

And merge with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48651613

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#54

Post by DanielleMolloy » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 10:06 PM UTC

lschueller wrote: post #47

DanielleMolloy wrote: post #31

Downdetector shows parallel disruption spikes, similar pattern as end of last year, not as widespread yet. https://downdetector.com

Mainly Meta Services, which seem to spike, isn't it? And Google Fiber

A bit more, traderepublic, tiktok, snapchat, X, AWS, CloudFlare

https://xn--allestrungen-9ib.de/en/

These could be based on different scales of numbers since it is midnight in Germany

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#55

Post by pulkitsh1234 » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 10:07 PM UTC

Interesting, I just took an OBB train today from Zurich to Amsterdam, which passes through a lot of Germany.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#56

Post by wrs » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 10:07 PM UTC

d2kx wrote: post #29

It's a GSM-R issue. See Tagesschau (German): https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/gesellschaft/deutsche-bahn-...

>This special mobile communication standard is designed to make communication fail-safe

Mmm, nope.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#57

Post by gib444 » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 10:08 PM UTC

felooboolooomba wrote: post #18

There 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

There was a GSM-R outage in the UK last month ago too [0]

[0] https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/nationwide-gsmr-outage-...

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#58

Post by LauraMedia » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 10:09 PM UTC

_def wrote: post #52

Same problem happened two years ago. You'd think that would be enough time to figure out a failsafe routine

Seems like the failsafe also failed today.

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#59

Post by porphyra » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 10:10 PM UTC

Is it just me or is the webpage broken with a redirect loop between:

* https://www.bluewin.ch/en/news/german-train-service-suspende...

* https://www.bluewin.ch/en/news/german-rail-service-suspended...

Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem

#60

Post by eqvinox » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 10:10 PM UTC

Kwpolska wrote: post #37

thih9 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a link? Was it similar to what we’re seeing now (nationwide, radio related)?

https://hackaday.com/2023/08/29/polish-railways-fall-victim-... tl;dr: Trains can be stopped by a transmitting a simple, documented tone sequence over analog radio.

Ah, good, not the same thing then.

Honestly, DB are perfectly capable of clusterf*cking their GSM-R without help from Russia.