Norfolk Southern Experiences System Outage
Written by Carolina Worrell, Senior Editor, Railway Age
Norfolk Southern
ATLANTA – Norfolk Southern (NS) experienced a system outage, resulting in nationwide train delays.
NS said it has restored all rail systems after the Class I railroad experienced a hardware-related technology outage that impacted all rail operations on Monday.
According to NS, which provided an update on its website, there was no indication that the outage was a cybersecurity incident, and all systems were restored at 7 p.m. ET. NS added that it expects the impact on its operations to last at least a couple of weeks and has been in touch with its customers to work on updated timings for their shipments.
According to a Railfan & Railroad Magazine report, the hours-long disruption was caused by a Positive Train Control (PTC) outage, resulting in “NS and Amtrak trains being unable to move because they could not connect to the PTC network.”
As of 7:20 p.m. EST on Aug. 28, it appeared the issues were continuing late into the evening, according to the Railfan & Railroad Magazine report. For example, Amtrak announced it would be canceling Northeast Regional 66 due to “ongoing host railroad server issues.” Other trains, according to the report, were still set to run but with “significant delays.”
Virginia Railway Express’s (VRE) Manassas Trains were also being held due to the system outage, according to an X (formerly Twitter) post.
According to a report in The Messenger, NS’s website and email systems also appeared to be experiencing outages.
