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Comment by samspenc | Hacker News Reader

I do hope they have a more detailed RCA at some point, right now this is the only helpful paragraph in the article about what happened:

> The IT failure occurred at the end of the morning. It affected the system that generates up-to-date schedules for trains and staff. This system is important for safe and scheduled operations: if there is an incident somewhere, the system adjusts itself accordingly. This was not possible due to the failure.

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I was expecting more as well. Not much information to glean from a barebones press release.

If I had to guess, it probably was an issue with scheduling/timetable software rather than anything to do with the trains, rails, etc. Nothing exceedingly seriously or difficult to correct.

Keep in mind that train schedules control what trains are on what tracks when, so while their are literally fail-safes in the system, this is not exactly far removed from being "safety critical".

That hasn’t been true in Europe for over a hundred years, and exceedingly rare in the US these days.

Isn’t this exactly what the press release states? “ if there is an incident somewhere, the system adjusts itself accordingly. This was not possible due to the failure.”

No, it’s talking about crew scheduling/allocation , not signaling.

The signaling system is totally fail safe. Even if that system totally went out, drivers are required to know where all the signals are, and to treat an unlit signal as a red.

What if the failure lit all the signals in green?

It can’t, they’re not wired like that. They’re engineered so any fault shows either red or nothing.

The train schedule system data aren't fed into the Automatic Route Setting system in Europe and US?

Sure, but failing that everything will just stop, not crash into other like GP implied

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