The Twitter account “Deutsche Bahn traffic reports” posted the first message. at 7:21 a.m. on Saturday morning. The first part of the sentence doesn’t sound very dramatic: “Due to a repair on the track…”. Everyday life on the train. No frequent driver and no commuter who would be shocked by something like that. The last part of the sentence, which was apparently tweeted in a hurry and contains an error, is a real hammer: “… currently no train journeys possible in the whole of northern Germany”.
I beg your pardon?
Maybe it’s lucky that the mess happened on Saturday morning. A time of low traffic, as railway experts say. At this early hour, hardly anyone takes notice of the tweet and it takes almost an hour for the event to be reflected as news in the news agencies. At 8:21 a.m., the German Press Agency sent out a breaking report with the headline: “Currently no long-distance traffic in northern Germany.”
At this point, long queues from the information points and travel centers have long since formed at the main train stations in Hamburg, Hanover and Bremen. In photos you can see crowds of people standing in the station halls.
Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony, Bremen and Hamburg are affected. No ICE, IC or EC trains could run from there or to there. The failures would therefore have consequences for all long-distance traffic in Germany. Parts of the regional traffic in the north are also affected.
What is supposed to be the cause of the total failure is slowly leaking out: a fault in the digital radio network. This is used, among other things, to control long-distance trains. It is a critical system that is specially protected. A railway executive posts a map on Twitter, which roughly shows the areas where digital radio does not work. On its website, Deutsche Bahn lists which routes are affected. The company encourages travelers to check there or the DB Navigator app for updates.
Two hours later there follows a – admittedly worded very carefully – all clear. The disturbances have been remedied, according to the railway. However, there will still be delays and cancellations in the coming hours.