Germany's National Railway Halts All Trains After Radio System Failure

Germany's national railway operator, Deutsche Bahn, halted all train services across the country late Tuesday evening due to a nationwide problem with its digital communication system, the company announced.

The disruption was caused by a fault in the GSM-R (Global System for Mobile Communications-Railway) system, which is used for internal communication between train drivers and control centers. Deutsche Bahn stated that all trains were being held at stations while technicians worked to resolve the issue.

In a brief statement on its website, Deutsche Bahn said its 'technicians are working at high pressure' to fix the problem but did not provide an estimated time for resolution or specify the number of trains affected.

The Bild newspaper quoted Deutsche Bahn CEO Evelyn Palla as saying, 'We are now trying to get the trains into stations so that travelers can disembark. And then we have to fix the problem, which we don't yet know.'

GSM-R is a standard communication system used across Europe since 2000 for railway operations, according to the European Union Agency for Railways. It provides voice and data services essential for safe and efficient train operation.

While the German railway system has on rare occasions halted all or most trains due to storms, this is an unusual technical failure. The cause of the outage remains under investigation.