The malfunction at a traffic control post of railway manager ProRail in Rotterdam was resolved around midnight on the night from Sunday to Monday. The outage caused train traffic in the region to be shut down for several hours on Sunday evening. The NS has announced that it will deploy as many extra trains as possible during the night to be able to take all stranded travelers home after all.
Because of the malfunction, ProRail was unable to see where the trains in the Rotterdam region were for a while. That was unsafe. “The malfunction at the traffic control post in Rotterdam arose on Sunday evening around 8.30 p.m. in one of the computers,” ProRail writes online.
The computer system has a backup in case of such failure. But that backup system also did not function properly on Sunday. ProRail: “Extensive research is being done into the cause of this, but it seems that it is due to a bug in the software. Several systems no longer worked as a result.”
The disruption affected all trains to and from Rotterdam and Dordrecht, an NS spokesperson said. Also trains on the high-speed line between Amsterdam Central and Breda were not running.
ProRail advises travelers to consult a travel planner for the most up-to-date travel information.