Train system shut down in Noord-Nederland; Restart likely from 2 p.m.

An outage affecting train traffic in the northern Netherlands was expected to be restarted in the early afternoon on Wednesday. There were no trains running north of Zwolle in the provinces of Drenthe, Friesland, and Groningen starting at about 12:30 p.m., and passengers were advised to give themselves an extra two hours of travel time when embarking on their journey, Dutch rail operator NS said. Arriva trains between Leeuwarden and Groningen were also affected.

ProRail halted train traffic due to an unknown malfunction at the traffic control post in Groningen, the rail manager said on Twitter. This control post manages train traffic in the Heerenveen and Assen regions and everything north of that, a ProRail spokesperson said to NOS.

"For safety reasons, train traffic has been shut down as long as the traffic control post systems are not up and running. Those are the eyes and ears of train traffic," the spokesperson said.

Multiple trains were in motion when the fault presented itself. These trains were halted immediately, ANP reports. ProRail is working hard to get things up and running again, including getting these trains back to stations.

The systems were restored at the traffic control post just before 2 p.m. The train restart procedures was expected to happen gradually over the course of the afternoon.

Although the cause of the malfunction is unknown, a cyberattack was ruled out, a spokesperson for ProRail told ANP. "We are investigating how this could have happened to prevent it from happening again in the future," the spokesperson said.