A faulty hardware component in the system for controlling signals and points caused the major disruption at the traffic control centre in Amsterdam. It took almost four days, but ProRail now knows for certain what went wrong. The hardware component has since been replaced. The system has been extensively tested over the past two days and is now working again, according to ProRail.
Investigations have been carried out in recent days to determine the cause. The analysis shows that a certain hardware component was dysfunctional. As a result, the software, which controls the operation of signals and points, failed. John Voppen, general manager of ProRail, said: 'We are doing further research on how to prevent this in the future.'
The system for operating signals and points at the traffic control centre in Amsterdam is fully redundant. This means that a faulty component basically has a backup, which takes over in case of malfunction or failure. However, during the failure, the hardware component in question did not signal that something was wrong. As a result, the redundancy did not function correctly either.
Travellers will still receive inconvenience during the night from next Friday to Saturday. During that period, they will return to the repaired traffic control post in Amsterdam. Until then, ProRail will work from the alternative location in Utrecht. Because the systems will be down during the return, no trains may run in the Amsterdam region for hours.
Incidentally, things often go wrong at railway managers. In the major ICT malfunction of July 2022 in Rotterdam, the backup of the computer systems turned out not to work properly. The problem then was in the software.