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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

That's so German. Maintenance is taken seriously.

The Berlin Wall had cut several railroad lines. When the wall came down, the tracks were quickly reconnected. Both sides had been maintaining them right up to the wall for three decades.

East and West Germany both had area codes, but although they had different country codes, there was no duplication of area codes, allowing an easy conversion to country code 49 after reunification.

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The underground lines through east Berlin were not cut, but the stations on the east side were barricaded and the trains didn't stop.

There was an elevated line that was cut, and it took several years after the fall of the wall to restore service.

http://www.appropriatesoftware.com/BerlinWall/Essay4.html

Not transit lines, heavy rail.

I don't know. The Berlin train system is known for stopping to work if its either to hot, to cold, to windy or to rainy.

This is about the subway (U-Bahn), not the rapid transit (S-Bahn), the latter had serious issues with maintenance a couple of years ago.

I recall that before unification(in West Berlin) S-Bahn trains used to be older and U-Bahn trains were newer. I do not know current state of comparison between U-Bahn and S-Bahn trains.

The DB bought newer cars in the late 1990s, the class 481. But this class had a lot of issues, which could be mitigated by better maintenance but since the DB wanted to go public those costs were too high, so they cut spending on maintenance.

And so the 481 will be replaced by the 483 and 484.

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