Communications failure halts Germany’s rail network nationwide

A failure in Deutsche Bahn’s GSM-R communications system stopped trains across Germany late Tuesday, leaving passengers stranded at stations and forcing rail staff to improvise as departures froze. Deutsche Bahn resolved the problem shortly before 1 a.m. local time on June 24, nearly two and a half hours after trains were held at stations, and service began restarting step by step.

The network includes 33,400 kilometres of track, about 5,400 stations, and daily traffic from 450 railway companies running roughly 50,000 trains. More than five million people travel with the company each day, and the failure in the internal radio system affected long-distance and regional services, S-Bahn lines, private operators and freight traffic.

Travelers felt the disruption first at major hubs such as Berlin and Munich, where lines formed at information desks as departures stalled and passengers tried to rework connections. Trains were held at stations from around 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 23, and the first services began moving again around 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday, June 24. Delays and cancellations continued into the morning peak even after traffic resumed.

The incident echoed a prior GSM-R disruption in September 2024, when a power outage at an energy supplier triggered a technical fault during the switch back from emergency power to grid power in central Germany. After that episode, Deutsche Bahn adjusted its diagnostic systems so similar failures could be detected and resolved earlier.

Deutsche Bahn had identified the cause of the latest failure but did not immediately specify what it was, leaving open whether the disruption came from hardware, software or another internal systems issue.