After initially only piecemeal and hesitant explanations about the nationwide disruption of train traffic, Deutsche Bahn has now presented some technical details about the causes. There should also be new rules for future maintenance work because, according to the railway, “scheduled maintenance work” had led to all trains coming to a standstill. DPA and SWR had already reported on a failed software update on the night in question, and the railway has now confirmed this.
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In a blog post published on Friday, Deutsche Bahn describes that the replacement of a network switch caused the problems. There was, literally, a “singular software error,” but no error message. This resulted in a failure of the GSM-R mobile communications system, without which trains are not allowed to run. According to Deutsche Bahn, there is a redundant system for GSM-R – but this was not activated automatically. It seems as if this switchover was dependent on an error message, but this did not occur as described.
First rule out a cyber attack, then switch over
In such a case, writes Deutsche Bahn, a cyber attack must first be ruled out. This seems to make sense, because in such cases you could no longer trust your own systems. Hasty countermeasures in the wrong place can only make the problems worse. After 90 minutes, railway employees manually activated the “fallback level” and the trains could run again.
This agrees with observations from heise online and numerous reports from travelers: some trains were moving again around 12:30 a.m. The first reports from people working in rail transport about the failure of GSM-R and thus the entire train service were around 10:20 p.m. The traffic chaos that was initially feared on Wednesday morning did not occur. This is inevitably the case with long-term outages of central rail systems because staff and trains are not where they should be.
In order to avoid such failures, the railway has taken three measures: For the time being, there should be no more replacement of components; the error should be resolved with the manufacturer of the switch. And probably most importantly, and often requested by observers: maintenance work should only be carried out from midnight to 4 a.m. Then almost only freight trains run on German rails, which can also stop on the open route without major subsequent problems.
GSM-R still has ten years left
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The head of the railways, the CEO of DB InfraGO, Philipp Nagl, also describes in the blog entry that the “fallback level via public mobile communications” is currently being set up for GSM-R. According to Nagl, the railway has been working on the renovation of GSM-R for some time; among other things, it should become more resilient. The railway’s 2G-based system will be used for at least another ten years, and only then will only the train radio standard FRMCS (Future Railway Mobile Communication System) be used. But, according to Deutsche Bahn: FRMCS has not yet been specified by the European Union, so components for it cannot be ordered or installed.
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