Berlin: Germany's railway network was operating largely as normal on Wednesday after a late-night communication system outage left trains and passengers stranded across the country. However, the main rail operator continued to face criticism and questions over the disruption.
Train services were abruptly halted across Germany late on Tuesday due to a problem with the GSM-R digital communication system used for internal communications on the railway network.
Services resumed after approximately two hours, during which long queues formed at information desks.
The main railway operator, the federal government-owned Deutsche Bahn, said trains began running "largely seamlessly" on Wednesday morning, although there could still be isolated service reductions.
The cause of the outage has not been disclosed.
The disruption comes after years of increasingly frequent complaints about train delays and service interruptions.
Deutsche Bahn is carrying out extensive but disruptive upgrades to major routes following years of underinvestment in an effort to improve performance.
"That all rail traffic in Germany comes to a halt because of a technical defect is a new low in already poor operating quality", Oliver Krischer, transport minister for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state, told news agency dpa.
He said there must be "emergency mechanisms that prevent such a disaster in the future. People rely on reaching their destination at least somewhat punctually by rail".
