Global tech outage largely bypasses freight and passenger railroads

U.S. and Canadian railroads appear to be relatively unaffected by the global tech outage that grounded flights and disrupted businesses today, although Union Pacific and Canadian Pacific Kansas City were experiencing some computer issues.

“The CrowdStrike software outage has had varying levels of impact across Union Pacific’s network,” spokeswoman Clarissa Beyah said this morning. “Our backup protocols enable us to communicate with our teams and dispatchers. We are doing everything possible to keep freight moving, but there have been some processing delays in customer shipments as we address targeted areas impacted on our network. We will continue to keep our stakeholders updated as we address the outage over the next 24 hours.”

A faulty overnight software update from CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm, affected systems running Microsoft Windows. Airlines, banks, television networks, and other industries that rely on the software to protect their systems against hacking and cyberattacks said their systems are gradually recovering from the incident.

CPKC spokesman Patrick Waldron said the outage has had some impact on its systems but that the rail network was operational.

Amtrak’s passenger operations were not affected, spokesman Marc Magliari said. In an alert at 7 a.m. Eastern time, Amtrak said the outage was preventing it from processing credit card transactions. Digital wallet transactions, however, were unaffected.

BNSF Railway, Canadian National, and CSX said their systems were not affected and that operations were normal. Norfolk Southern did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A check of live video feeds from around the U.S. showed Amtrak and freight trains moving on all of the Class I systems.

Commuter rail systems around the U.S. largely reported that service was unaffected aside from technical glitches such as real-time train status information and platform boarding announcements that affected the MBTA in Boston and the Long Island Railroad in New York.

Two container terminals at the Port of New York and New Jersey were scheduled to open late today due to the outage, according to the port authority. Port Houston’s two container terminals had a delayed opening as well.