Dutch Train Traffic Halts Due to Faulty Transceiver

A computer glitch in Amsterdam’s traffic control center caused a train traffic halt, leaving stranded passengers. ProRail’s IT director, Arjen Boersma, shares insights on the incident. Boersma was about to relax with a beer when he received a disruptive text about the outage.

Train traffic stopped for 15 hours due to a malfunction, affecting around 750 trains and inconveniencing passengers. The computer systems crashed twice, leading Boersma and his team to troubleshoot and ultimately move operations to an emergency location.

Passengers experienced uncertainty and inconvenience, prompting criticism of the response. ProRail and Dutch Railways will investigate the disruption. The cause was a faulty transceiver component, a small and inexpensive hardware piece. ProRail has replaced it and is relocating operations back to Amsterdam.