BERLIN (AP) 鈥� A problem with a communications system forced railway network to halt all trains late Tuesday, leaving passengers stranded across the country.
Trains were held at stations and would-be travelers stood in long lines at information desks as they tried to figure out how to get to their destinations.
The main national railway operator, Deutsche Bahn, said shortly before 1 a.m. 鈥� nearly 2 1/2 hours after it first reported the outage 鈥� that the problem had been resolved and service was resuming 鈥渟tep by step.鈥�
The company said there was a nationwide problem with the GSM-R digital communication system, which is used for internal communication on the railway network. It later said that the cause had been identified, but didn’t specify what it was.
The Bild newspaper quoted Deutsche Bahn CEO Evelyn Palla as saying that they “were able to stabilize the situation with an emergency system.鈥�
Deutsche Bahn said during the outage that it was giving taxi and hotel vouchers to passengers and, where possible, making available trains at stations for travelers to sit in. It apologized for the situation.
At Berlin’s central station, Reyna Ghoshal and a friend were trying to get back to Munich after a trip to the German capital and saw “unhappy faces鈥� as they arrived at the station.
鈥淭he train conductor was very nice, but he was just like, 鈥榳e don鈥檛 know,鈥欌�� said Ghoshal, who is from Atlanta. She said that 鈥渨e booked a bus for 8 a.m. just in case, but generally we don鈥檛 know what鈥檚 going on.”
In recent years, complaints about train delays and disruption in Germany have become increasingly frequent.
Government-owned Deutsche Bahn has started conducting thorough but disruptive after years of underinvestment in a bid to improve its performance.
The German railway system has on rare occasions in the past halted all or most trains, but because of storms rather than for technical reasons.
GSM-R, short for Global System for Mobile Communications鈥揜ailway, offers voice and data services needed to operate railways, including communication between train drivers and control centers.
According to the European Union Agency for Railways, it has been introduced across Europe since 2000 as a common standard for railway operations.
Copyright © 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.
