Travel Diaries: Nederlandse Spoorwegen

Map of Dutch Railways services (via NS)

In addition to doing various trips to other countries in the EU, my time in Amsterdam allowed me to do a bit of travelling within the Netherlands, on their equivalent of V/Line, Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS - "Dutch Railways"). Again there's a lot we can learn from how they do things, so let's take a whirlwind tour of a country I'm feeling very nostalgic for after ~18 months of COVID restrictions. 

Amsterdam Zuid station

In some of my previous posts I've dealt with Amsterdam Centraal, which is on the waterfront at the northernmost edge of old Amsterdam, and the elegantly-designed Lelylaan, but my home station was Amsterdam Zuid ("South"). Amsterdam's shiny new financial district, known as Zuidas, has grown around Zuid station and the nearby campus of Vrije Universiteit, where I studied, so Zuid is a pretty significant interchange between regional trains and multiple Metro lines. It's not all that visually striking, but it's certainly handy and has a good level of service - good enough that if you're going somewhere regional you really don't need to go into Centraal. 

Schiphol Airport station (via umelog)

I never flew in or out of Schiphol Airport, though I did inadvertently visit it once (more on that below). Its station seems to be very well-located from a passenger perspective - you come up the escalator from the platforms right onto the main concourse - but also from an operational perspective, it's a really good model for how airport rail can be done well, and really integrated into the network, rather than just a dead end. Both the high-speed line and the conventional mainline from Amsterdam to Rotterdam pass through the station, so it's easy for the airport to get a good level of service from a combination of short-run trains that terminate there, and long-distance trains that - for example - come from the northeast of the country, through Amsterdam Zuid to Schiphol, then onto Den Haag (The Hague). 

Certainly in the short term Melbourne's Airport Rail Link will only be for terminating Metro trains, but I'm definitely onboard with the idea from Rail Futures and others, who suggest it should be designed to allow for future through-running of Bendigo, Shepparton and/or Sydney services. 

Den Haag Centraal station, with tram platforms above the trains

Den Haag was the place outside Amsterdam I visited the most, and Den Haag Centraal Station is another masterful piece of interchange. At ground level are a bunch of terminating platforms, a la Southern Cross. But up on an elevated concourse are four tram platforms, for trams to swoop in one side and out the other (in addition to stops on the street outside for other tram routes at ground level). And higher still is a huge covered concourse for the bus interchange. 

Despite how much I loved the modern and efficient design of Den Haag Centraal, I'm pretty gutted I never went to see its older cousin, Den Haag Hollands Spoor - the through station on the mainline to Rotterdam. Seeing it as a dot on the map, and having passed through boring suburban stations like Mariahoeve, I'd assumed it would be more of the same - but like a year after I got back I saw some photos of its gorgeous architecture and stained-glass windows and kicked myself for not going to check it out when I had the chance. 

Utrecht Centraal station (via pvl83)

The centrepiece of the Dutch railways is Utrecht - only their fourth-biggest city, but the biggest station and home to the headquarters of NS. Australia's railway networks tend to look like spiders that radiate out from the state capitals, but the Dutch network is much more of an anywhere-to-anywhere network, going in all directions - with Utrecht at the centre of it all. Being so centrally located, it's a key interchange, so for example any train leaving Amsterdam and heading in a roughly southeasterly direction will stop there, as will a number of trains leaving Rotterdam or Den Haag and heading northeast. 

This much more comprehensive network structure really came in handy on one of my trips to Den Haag. I had an appointment to pick up my new passport from the Australian embassy there, but on the morning in question, there were no trains running between Schiphol and Leiden, and therefore no through trains from Zuid to Den Haag. They didn't seem to be communicating very clearly what was happening or why...though this is one situation where it probably would have been handy if I knew more Dutch. 

I did at least get to see part of the Netherlands I otherwise wouldn't have

Slightly cluelessly I figured my best bet was to head in the general direction I'd originally intended, and hope they put us on a rail replacement bus when the time came. Turns out, no - the train terminated at Schiphol and I had to ask Dr Google to find me a regular bus that would take me further. So I was treated to a very slow and circuitous bus trip through small-town South Holland which eventually got me to Leiden, where I could board another train. 

Leiden Centraal station

Despite ending up getting to the embassy massively late, they were very accommodating and I was able to enjoy the rest of the day sightseeing. When it came time to go home, though, I'd learned my lesson - a quick train to Utrecht and another back to Amsterdam allowed me to zigzag home much more quickly and easily. And I suppose this is one of the advantages of that more comprehensive rail network - it's more resilient, and allows you to route around problems to a larger extent. Imagine trying to do that in Victoria, where all lines point to Southern Cross! 

Gorgeous Groningen station with its underground bike parking

Towards the end of my stay I went for a daytrip up north to Groningen. As part of a deal when I'd bought my student OV-chipkaart (myki equivalent) months earlier, I'd bought a cheap ticket to anywhere in the country, and I'd saved it to use on a big long journey - which was lucky because when I paid for the return ticket it was pretty expensive. Groningen is another university town, and a hub for other small towns and villages in the area. Its gorgeous old heritage station has the "winged wheel" symbol on top - I don't think I've ever seen this associated with the railways in Australia, but it's quite common in the Netherlands and Denmark, and it turns out it has connections to the London Underground roundel, heraldry, and Ancient Greece. 

A Koploper at Amsterdam Centraal station

The train I'd taken to Groningen was a long-distance train, known formally as an ICM (Intercity Materieel, "Intercity Rolling Stock") but informally as a Koploper ("head walker"). These trains were designed with the driver's cab perched above the passenger areas, and with a door on the front to allow passengers to walk between joined sets - although this apparently caused huge reliability issues, so a late 2000s refurb saw the gangways removed. These units are a little dated but broadly do a good job as the medium/long-distance workhorses of the NS fleet, and I do quite like the quirky look of the snub-nosed driver cabs poking up at the top. 

VIRM train near Teuge (via Jan Derk Remmers)

Many other intercity trips are served by the newer double-decker VIRM units (Verlengd InterRegio Materieel, "Lengthened Interregional Rolling Stock"), which I absolutely adored - to my mind by far the best-looking trains in the NS fleet, and a great passenger experience whether low down among the bogies on the bottom level or high up on the top level. They're called "Lengthened" because they started out as three- and four-car sets in the 1990s but were upgraded to four- and six-car sets in the 2000s - similar to what Victoria's government did with the two-car VLocitys in the 2010s. 

Sprinter Lighttrain at Amsterdam Zuid station

The Sprinter Lighttrains (SLTs) are designed for key local commuter services, particularly around the Randstad. For example when I'd get a train from Zuid to Den Haag I'd generally take a Koploper that would run semi-express, only stopping at a few key stations along the way; the SLTs would ply similar routes but stop at all the smaller stations along the way. I had a short ride on one when travelling home from Den Haag once, as I'd missed the express Koploper a few minutes earlier, but it was so much slower I was better off changing at Leiden for the next express than sticking with the SLT the whole way. 

They do their job well, though they definitely don't look at cool as the Sprinter Nieuwe Generatie (Sprinter New Generation) trains which perform a similar function (but are mostly designed to replace the older SGMs, not the SLTs). I spotted these around the network a few times but never managed to ride one. 

Long-distance Koploper and local FLIRT train at Groningen

Some of the smaller local services aren't operated by NS, they're operated by private companies. For example, Arriva Trains operate small FLIRT trains between Groningen and nearby towns like Leeuwarden, Delfzijl and Windschoten. 

The Dutch plans for high-frequency regional trains by 2040 (via IRJ)

When it comes to the service levels, they're already very good. Even relatively long trips, like Amsterdam to Groningen, get about a 30 minute frequency from both Centraal and Zuid (though this is achieved through a mixture of one- and two-seat journeys). Around the Randstad, again the splitting of services between multiple hubs splits the frequencies a bit, but you're still unlikely to have more than a 15-minute wait from any major station. Broadly, the Netherlands' national network has frequencies comparable to Melbourne's Metro network - better, in many instances. 

And they plan to go even further - they want turn-up-and-go services throughout not only the Randstad, but to most other major Dutch cities, by 2040. Combine metro-style frequencies across most of the regional network, with actual metros/trams in several of the cities you might arrive in, and exemplary bike networks throughout, and you can really go anywhere in this country without needing a car. 

The Netherlands isn't just a great cycling nation, its railways are incredible too - and despite the length of this post I really only scratched the surface while I was over there. Here's hoping I can go back soon.