Halfway through 2026, reliability is shaping up to be the key rail freight term of the year. It is, of course, Germany which is putting the spotlight on predictable operations. The many infrastructure works have sown chaos. At night, Germany was again struck by a disruption. It took only an hour to disrupt rail freight for days — at least, that is the expectation at rail freight association Die Güterbahnen.
A nationwide outage of the rail communication system GSM-R has struck Germany during the nightly hours. Between 23.31 on 23 June and 00:30 on 24 June, all freight trains were halted in the country, reports rail operator METRANS.
Despite the disruptions lasting for about an hour, the incident is sending operational ripple effects through the rail freight sector. METRANS predicts “significant delays […] across the entire rail network”. Rail freight association Die Güterbahnen says that the outage will affect logistics chains for days.
As of the time of reporting, a large share of the trains in Germany are still unable to depart. “Freight trains primarily operate at night, which is why they are particularly affected by the disruption. While some trains have resumed running since midnight, approximately half of our freight trains are still at a standstill, scattered across the country and at the borders”, commented Managing Director of Die Güterbahnen Neele Wesseln.
Rail freight is sensitive to these outages
Disruptions like these are particularly harmful to rail freight, because companies plan their operations in tightly scheduled cycles, the German association explains. “A train transports goods from A to B, immediately picks up the next wagons for C, and the driver switches to the next train after their shift. If even one train is stranded on the open track for hours, this entire chain breaks down.”
It is the second nationwide disruption in a short period of time in Germany. On 1 April, no trains to or from Germany were possible due to an overhead line failure. This took place on a key detour route for the Hamburg–Berlin railway works.
Services restarted on the same day, but delays kept accumulating in the following days and weeks. These were compounded by the many infrastructure works taking place in Germany and the limited availability of alternative routes.
Die Güterbahnen has called upon the German rail infrastructure manager DB InfraGO to provide a full and transparent explanation of the incident.