All train services across Germany were brought to an abrupt halt for roughly two hours late on Tuesday evening after a failure in the digital radio system that links drivers and control centres, stranding thousands of passengers and stopping freight traffic nationwide. According to Deutsche Bahn (DB), the state-owned operator, the stoppage began around 22:30 local time when the GSM-R network – a safety-critical communication channel – suffered a widespread disruption. Trains already en route were ordered to stop at the next station or remain on open tracks; long-distance ICE services, regional trains, S-Bahn commuter lines and private operators were all affected. Service began to resume shortly after midnight, with the first trains moving again around 00:30 on Wednesday, though DB warned of residual delays and cancellations throughout the morning.

DB initially attributed the outage to a “planned exchange of a technical component” in the GSM-R system, but the precise mechanism that caused a nationwide failure remains under investigation. German security circles, cited by several domestic media, indicated that a faulty software update was suspected, while authorities saw no evidence of sabotage or a cyberattack. The GSM-R network, based on 1990s-era 2G mobile technology, serves as the sole digital voice and data link between train drivers and signalling centres; its collapse left no immediate fallback, forcing the operator to stabilise the situation using an emergency system, according to DB chief executive Evelyn Palla.

Political reaction was swift and cross-party. Bavaria’s transport minister Christian Bernreiter said the incident exposed a lack of adequate contingency planning, while his counterpart in North Rhine-Westphalia, Oliver Krischer, described the total shutdown as “a new low point in already poor operating quality”. Brandenburg’s transport minister Robert Crumbach demanded a “complete clarification” and called for infrastructure upgrades to prevent a recurrence. The passenger association Pro Bahn urged DB to equip drivers with service mobile phones and to build redundancy into the radio system, noting that a similar, though regional, outage had occurred in 2022 after cable theft in northern Germany.

By Wednesday morning, passenger services were running largely normally again, though freight operators reported that roughly half of all goods trains remained stationary across the country and at borders, with the backlog expected to take days to clear. DB said it was analysing the root cause with “highest priority” and had reported the incident to the federal IT security authority as required for critical infrastructure disruptions. The episode unfolded hours before Palla was due to appear before the Bundestag transport committee to answer questions about the multi-year delay to the Stuttgart 21 rail project, adding to scrutiny of the company’s wider infrastructure challenges.