Trains were brought to a standstill for several hours in Sydney due to a failure in the digital train radio system (DTRS) on Wednesday. The outage started at 2:45 pm, affecting not only the Sydney metropolitan area but also intercity lines.
The DTRS is responsible for connecting train crews with the signaller and rail operations centre. Transport for NSW said that, for safety reasons, trains had to be halted at platforms until engineers could reboot the system.
Services resumed shortly after 6 pm but were reduced and on a changed timetable. Passengers were safely disembarked from trains during the outage. Social media posts suggested that a recent DTRS upgrade may have contributed to the issue, but this has not been confirmed.