Any HNer blocked in a DB train who can share with us the experience?
The 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.
That sucks, sorry for this
Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem
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Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem
#92There 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
Yes, and just yesterday a passenger train was routed into the path of a freight train due to some points failure. It does make you wonder. https://www.railmagazine.com/news/points-failure-results-in-...
The trains heading for each other was not a direct result of the points failure but a direct result of the manual operation of the points after the failure. Everything was on go-slow so no risk of collision. This was human error.
Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem
#93Any 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.
Yeah, definitely. Hope you can get to your plane on time and that you can expense the uber trip, that’s a pretty long ride from what I see on gmap
Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem
#94I wonder how they managed to tell trains to stop.
Stop 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".
Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There is even a website just for that: https://www.db-gebrauchtzug.de/r/gbzp/gbzp/home?session=2228...
Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem
#96Trains 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.
Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem
#97Is that news? Sounds like status quo.
Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem
#98If 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.
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…
The one good thing is that they failed to take it private. Imagine how bad it would be with the current maintenance backlog and no public funding.
Re: Trains halted across Germany because of communication system problem
#99Any 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 (…
Yeah, I experienced that a few times in airports with massive disturbance. You could see all the hotels getting fully booked almost live, then when you eventually arrive somewhere with a booking you still have to wait an hour due to how long the queue at the hotel reception is. Always a crazy experience