From Telegraph, via MSNHow German trains became the shame of a nation
When the 10pm service of Berlin’s U2 metro line failed to set off from the station, its frazzled driver finally snapped.
“Get away from the doors!” he bellowed, leaping out to berate a young woman as she pawed at the broken, flashing-red buttons on the side of the train. “Don’t touch the doors!”
Unbeknownst to the driver, who seemed to think the woman’s button-mashing had caused the breakdown, Germany’s entire rail system had just been crippled by a software glitch.
For the next two hours, hundreds of thousands of Germans were left stranded on platforms or sweltering in packed carriages as the metro, intercity and commuter networks all failed at once on Tuesday.
In some regions the delays lasted even longer, with passengers forced to seek out hotel rooms or sleep on benches in the train station.
You might think that travel chaos on this scale in Germany, a nation famed for its love of efficiency and punctuality, is unusual – but you would be sorely mistaken.
After decades of underinvestment, Germany’s crumbling rail network has become a source of national humiliation for a country that was once the gold standard in engineering.
Last year, some 40 per cent of all long-distance trains in Germany were delayed, as cancellations, overcrowding and full-on breakdowns risked becoming the norm in Europe’s wealthiest economy.
Astonishingly, the Germans’ punctuality record is now even worse than Britain’s: 72 per cent of intercity trains ran on time in Germany in 2025, compared to 78 per cent of British long-distance trains.
The situation has become so dire that, in neighbouring Switzerland, late German trains are simply turned away at the border as they will otherwise create knock-on delays in Vienna.
Railway campaigners say the root cause is a stubborn refusal over decades to invest in public transport, owing to the country’s strong aversion to taking on debt.
But they also blame issues with recruitment, mountains of bureaucracy and a general sense of defeatism at the upper level of Deutsche Bahn, the national rail provider.
“There was a time when we made small talk about the weather in Germany,” Michael Koch, the deputy chairman of Pro Bahn, a group that campaigns on behalf of passengers, told The Telegraph. “Now we talk about the trains.”
Germany’s railway infrastructure has become “encrusted” with bureaucracy that can make even fairly unambitious renewal projects drag on for years, he said.
“So much of the infrastructure is at a standstill and too little has been invested,” he added, noting that some Germans do not even bother with reservations for a connecting train any more as they assume they will miss it.
Friedrich Merz, Germany’s centre-Right chancellor, has announced a €500bn (£431bn) “special fund” to rebuild the train system, but Pro Bahn has stressed that much more work needs to be done.
“It is not just about money, we need to create a structure with a clear plan, where you can move forward and hire more staff, and there needs to be real political will in the government to strengthen the rail service,” said Mr Koch.
At Berlin’s central train station on Friday, the air was sweltering, the platforms were heaving and the announcement board showed that eight trains were already running late.
Hannelore Huth, a 63-year-old pensioner waiting on platform four, laughed when asked if such shoddy engineering had become the norm in the nation that gave the world Bosch dishwashers and BMWs.
“I once had an issue where doors on the train wouldn’t close and I got stuck for 50 minutes,” she said while waiting for a train to Dresden with her friend Gudrun Baresel, 62.
“I had to get on a second train to the airport, and the only reason I didn’t miss the flight was because I left so early. No, we are not proud of the trains.”
On platform seven, The Telegraph found Can Pugliese, 28, sitting on the floor of the platform wondering if there was much chance of getting to Hanover by the end of the day.
“The train we wanted to take isn’t coming, so now we are waiting for the next one. It is also delayed,” he said, with impressive good humour for a man stranded and sweltering in 35C heat.
“I don’t remember it being as much of a problem when I was a child. Nowadays, I try to avoid taking the train at all costs,” he added, reflecting a fairly widespread travel strategy in Germany.
That in itself is deeply ironic: under the previous government, which included the Green party, Germany imposed strict travel rules that punished citizens for flying instead of taking the train.
In May 2024, the price of domestic flights surged when Olaf Scholz’s Ampel [traffic light] coalition raised aviation taxes, in the hope it would encourage Germans to take more environmentally friendly modes of transport.
The policy backfired horribly: it not only drew more attention to the state of the trains, but became a key campaign issue for the hard-Right Alternative for Germany [AfD] party as it cried foul on elitism.
Since then, the AfD has become the second-largest political party in Germany and is currently leading the polls, while the Scholz-era aviation taxes have been reversed.
As for Tuesday evening’s nationwide railway crisis, there was one more twist to the tale which made the situation only more farcical.
When the trains failed, many speculated about what kind of force majeure could be behind it.
Was it a power cut? The heatwave? Or perhaps even a Russian cyber-attack?
In fact, Deutsche Bahn explained, the culprit was one of their own engineers – who accidentally shut down the entire communications network during pre-planned maintenance.
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