Norfolk Southern experiences another tech outage

For the second time in a month, Norfolk Southern Railway experienced a technology outage that impacted rail operations.

On Sept. 30, the Class I announced its data center experienced an outage, which impacted the dispatching system, train movements and the functioning of its terminal operating system. The problem began on the night of Sept. 29 and was resolved by early the next morning.

"All systems are now fully functional, and trains are running," NS officials said in a press release. "Our marketing team is collaborating closely with customers to keep them informed. We expect the impact to our operations to last at least a couple of weeks as we work to mitigate traffic congestion caused by the outage."

There’s no indication that the outage was related to an unauthorized cybersecurity incident or the outage that occurred Aug. 28, NS officials said.

"We are continuing to examine the root cause of the incident but believe at this time that it relates to a vendor product defect," they said. "Further, Norfolk Southern has undertaken a total review of the resiliency of its data center and network technology to prevent future outages."