Three hours of total paralysis. an act of “sabotage” Directing radio link cables caused a massive disruption that completely shut down rail traffic in northern Germany on the morning of Saturday, Oct. 8, Deutsche Bahn said.
All high-speed and regional connections in the north of the country have been interrupted. This sabotage was aimed at “cables essential for the movement of trains”the German company said, after the partial recovery of traffic.
More specifically, it would be the GSM-R radio network of the trains, which is used for communication with the drivers, but also of“central interface between trains and infrastructure” check, confirms of the mirror, the first media to report these suspicions of sabotage. This one “fiber optic cables” could have been cut “in two places”, describes the German magazine. According to the daily Imagethe sabotage is said to have taken place in Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous region, in the west of the country.
Thousands of travelers stranded in stations
An action targeting this type of cable would not be within the reach of the former and would require: “some knowledge” of the rail system, sources close to Deutsche Bahn indicate: Imagestating that the federal police are in charge of the investigation.
In particular, the incident led to an interruption of connections between Berlin and certain regions in the west and north of the country, such as Schleswig-Holstein, the cities of Hamburg and Bremen, or even Lower Saxony and part of the Rhineland. Westphalia. The Berlin-Amsterdam connection has also been suspended.
As a result, thousands of travelers were stranded in stations on Saturday morning. Cancellations and delays were still to be expected during the day, despite connections being restored, the German railway company warned.
An aging railway network
The Deutsche Bahn company is regularly selected because of the many delays on its lines. For example, at the beginning of September, it had announced that it would have to carry out titanic work, with the replacement of 137,000 concrete sleepers, to improve its tracks.
the train derailment in the Bavarian Alps, which had caused the deaths of five people and injured more than 40 in early June, had tragically illustrated the poor condition of the German lines linked to years of underinvestment. These failures are all the more so as the government has been encouraging the Germans, big followers of the car, to take the train in recent months.
In Germany, experiments have been going on all summer with a monthly ticket of 9 euros that allows you to travel on the entire German network, with the exception of high-speed trains. It has been a huge success, with approximately 52 million tickets sold.