The last classic electrics multiple units. Once the back bone of the whole of NS passenger service now deminished to some remaining services. The NS line Zwolle – Emmen is privatised from 9 December 2012 and will loose its old yellow train sets.

de lijn heeft potentie; geschat op 2000 mensen per etmaal van de verbinding gebruik gaan maken (Ter vergelijking: Enschede – Gronau: 1200, Venlo – Kaldenkirchen: 1600, Heerlen – Aachen: 800).

The Netherlands have build a very ecpensive High Speed Line from Dutch Belgium border to Schiphol Airport near Amsterdam. One intermediate stop at Rotterdam. However political short sighted they forgot to build the line connecting NL & Germany although 70% of our trade is with Germany. And privatised NS High Speed bought the cheap and untested failing expectation electric emu’s by Ansaldo in Italy.

Het huidige station is in 1878 geopend, toen ook de reizigersdienst op het traject Leiden

The only ticket valid on the trains is a Syntus return ticket for one day for

Local trains and faster trains dominate the 2 Dutch Belgium rail links by Roosendaal and Maastricht. Roosendaal has to be feared for when the High Speed railway will open. NS Commerce is not thinking in local boarder crossing services. Between Holland and Germany IC and ICE services (every year one less it seems) pass Arnhem to Oberhausen and Hengelo to Bad Bentheim. At Nieuwe Schans and Heerlen only local services cross the almost none existing inner European boarders.

Some industries stayed as customers to the railways. The state railway companies have done their best to give customers a horrible service in a serious try to kick out every customer with just a few cars a week or day. Road transport is develop customer friendly equipment and tries to do what they promise at low costs. However the new private rail freight operators have regained some tonnage for the railways. In the Netherlands rail freight grew again from 20 million ton per year 10 years ago to 34 million ton in 2006.

When I started photographing railway ans tramway matters in 1974 most trains already were painted yellow. After the future vision “Spoorslags ’70” NS worked out also a new corporate image. Yellow and a new logo were adopted and the inland “40 Steden Tempo Trein” was introduced. Every hour an Intercity between the 40 most important stations. Connections granted on a number of crossing platforms. It worked out well. Over the years the number of passengers grew and grew. They even more than doubled.
Today such a plan would be renewing and refreshing again. Todays NS-Reizigers (passengers) have become a slow acting and inside looking company who completely forgot what service is. The best performance they would like to have seems to be running empty trains exactly on time.