german railway operator deutsche bahn at first limited the maximum speed of its trains to , then all services on the domestic intercity/intercityexpress network as well as the local services in northern and western germany were discontinued from 17:15 on 18 january onwards, as major main lines (bremen-hannover, hamburg-hanover, bremen-osnabrück) and many branch lines were affected by the storm. in an unprecedented move, deutsche bahn discontinued virtually all train services in germany at 19:30 cet until further notice, with only very limited local services running on a per-line decision basis. trains currently on the lines would stop at the next station and stay there, leaving passengers stranded all over germany in the tens of thousands. later, as the situation was worsening, trains were left open for those passengers unable to find a hotel to sleep in. in major affected stations, such as münster and hanover, air raid shelters in the stations were opened up for the night, with the red cross issuing blankets to stranded passengers. train services were resumed on the morning of 19 january, but cancellations and delays continued during the weekend as of track needed to be checked and cleared. the db was faced by the massive challenge of getting its network into working order again after coming to a full stop during the night, the first such event ever to happen on the german railway network in peacetime. on 18 january, an intercity train ran into a tree that had fallen onto the tracks between elmshorn and westerland. one of the locomotives was damaged, no casualties were reported. an intercity train with 450 passengers on board was stuck near diepholz and had to be evacuated, duisburg hauptbahnhof station was suffering from a power outage as the result of a grid failure.