Rail traffic through the Žilina junction has been placed in an emergency regime after a fire at the city's railway station on Wednesday. The blaze damaged the station's signalling and safety equipment, the hardware that controls how trains are routed through the node. With that system down, dispatchers cannot guarantee safe passage, so normal operations were suspended. Replacement transport has been laid on to carry passengers on the routes their trains would normally serve. Žilina is one of the busiest crossroads in the Slovak rail network, so delays there spread quickly to connections in several directions. Travellers face longer journeys and awkward transfers while crews work to repair the damaged devices. How quickly that repair is completed will decide how painful the disruption becomes for daily commuters.