THE NETHERLANDS | Railways

[Timon91]

You mean VIRM?

[Club_Dru]

(V)IRM = Inter Regio Materiaal
(V)= Verlengd/ Extended

[Timon91]

Yeah, those trains are pretty good and have a high capacity. A disadvantage is that it isn't very spacious.

[NielsC]

Indead , expecially during rush-hours . The VIRM trains are than very crouded (is that the right spelling ?) and sometimes you can stand up for an hour during your journey home

[Glodenox]

Do they also downgrade the first class to second when a lot of people have to stand up in the train? It does take quite a lot of people before they do that here, and it all depends on the train conductor's decision whether or not it should be downgraded or not (who is often reluctant to doing that).

For such a train to be crowded, it probably takes a lot of people, so I assume you're talking about connections between major cities? Or should the interval at which the trains arrive improve? It's hard to see on pictures, but I think those carriages are relatively short compared to other double deck carriages, perhaps that's why they're not that spacious?

Greetings,
Glodenox

[Momo1435]

They only downgrade the 1st class to 2nd in extreme situations, but it's not something that happens often. So it's not common during a normal rush hour even when the trains are crowded.

It's not so much the trains carriages that lack seat capacity, they have a normal length. It's more that the trains are often too short, just two 4 car set set instead of two 6 car set coupled for example. But now new more VIRM double deck sets are arriving, creating more capacity even though they are replacing older single deck trains.

But that's not all that being done. The frequencies for Intercity trains between the major cities have increased the last few years. But you have to remember that the Dutch railways are already one of the busiest in the world, so running more trains is not always an option. But now there's a plan to increase the frequency drastically to 6 or more IC trains every hour between all the big cities next to the also frequent stopping services. It just takes time to create the capacity by building more tracks especially at the major junctions that are already major bottlenecks. Also changes in the Automatic Train Protection and other systems that control the running of the trains have to be made to make trains run sooner after each other. All in all it should ease the crowding, but if the passenger number keep on increasing it will still be a problem that we should get used to.

[serdar samanlı]

Why Utrecht is the busiest? Isn't Amsterdam Centraal the largest station in the Netherlands?

[serdar samanlı]

What type of train is used in between Amsterdam CS and Schiphol?

[Wuppeltje]

Utrecht Centraal is the busiest station, Amsterdam Centraal 2nd.

Utrecht is an important national city (strong base), but there are 2 other things that make Utrecht Centraal bigger:
-Utrecht Centraal is the most important train hub in the Netherlands.
-Amsterdam has several important stations with long distance Dutch connections: 1. Amsterdam Centraal, 2. Amsterdam Sloterdijk, 3. Amsterdam Bijlmer/ArenA, 4. Amsterdam Zuid and 5. Amsterdam Amstel. Especially stations 2, 3 and 4 are growing rapidly. Utrecht has only 1 long important station (Utrecht Centraal).

[Wuppeltje]

Originally Posted by serdar samanlı

What type of train is used in between Amsterdam CS and Schiphol?

4x hour VIRM


2x hour DD-AR/DDM
image hosted on flickr


1x hour IRCm (Benelux train)
image hosted on flickr


Thalys 5x day


So at least 7 trains per hour to Amsterdam Centraal. To Amsterdam Zuid there are even running 10 trains per hour.

[Timon91]

Originally Posted by Glodenox

Do they also downgrade the first class to second when a lot of people have to stand up in the train? It does take quite a lot of people before they do that here, and it all depends on the train conductor's decision whether or not it should be downgraded or not (who is often reluctant to doing that).

For such a train to be crowded, it probably takes a lot of people, so I assume you're talking about connections between major cities? Or should the interval at which the trains arrive improve? It's hard to see on pictures, but I think those carriages are relatively short compared to other double deck carriages, perhaps that's why they're not that spacious?

Greetings,
Glodenox

I only had that once. On the 11th of August 1999 to be exact, when there was a solar eclipse. Since it was the best in the south of the country, a lot of people got on a train south, to Maastricht. From Utrecht CS on, there were no more seats available, so people had to stand up from Utrecht to Maastricht. After Eindhoven the conductor finally said that the first class would be downgraded. Not that it made much difference, but still he did it

[error98]

Because of a reason unknown to me, sometimes the new VIRM trains service my station instead of the 'Sprinter'.

Yowza! These new VIRM's are smóóóth! The older VIRM's produce this eerie sound as if there's some variable transmission belt in use on those trains. However the new VIRM are extremely silent. One could easily play a game of chess on a Dutch train.

The NS Railways know a few flaws but overall, the network rocks! Like half of the major cities are being served at night already, and the other half is said to follow in due course.

The Hague, Haarlem, Amsterdam and Groningen all have beautiful stations. Nearly every station proves to be quite convenient to travellers. Though Rotterdam and Arnhem are in a bit of a mess, thanks to the crunch I believe. I love those Ducth train commuters too. People seem to be more in the know of delays and eagerly suggest other services once you get stuck.

You will find only a few terminal stations in Holland, perhaps that's why you can travel so smoothly around the country. Utrecht is very, very busy and offers excellent connections.

What I find odd though is that travelling on the ICE from (Frankfurt) Utrecht to Amsterdam isn't any quicker than on the regular train services. Is it because those ICE trains are too heavy and thus too slow? Odd really.

[Momo1435]

Originally Posted by error98

What I find odd though is that travelling on the ICE from (Frankfurt) Utrecht to Amsterdam isn't any quicker than on the regular train services. Is it because those ICE trains are too heavy and thus too slow? Odd really.

Even though the line is designed is designed for 200 km/h, the maximum speed is still 140 km/h. The ICE can not use it's higher maximum speed then the regular trains to go faster. Right now they are installing the ERTMS train protection system, that will increase the speed to 160 km/h. To reach the 200 km/h they also need to upgrade the power supply from 1500v to 25kV, but that's something for the future and no decision has been made yet to change it.

[error98]

Thanks for the explanation, Momo!

I was under the impression that German highspeed trains are too fat as it were, compared to the lean French TGVs

Why don't the Dutch build their own highspeed trains. You've got such a wealth of engineering companies to choose from!

[Timon91]

We're building the HSL-zuid, from Amsterdam to the Belgian border. It will take a few years before it's completely finished and working though. There are lots of problems with the trains and the safety system

[G5man]

Were they trying to use custom everything for Zuid in terms of sets and safety or was it going to be off the shelf ETCS? That HSL would be critical and provide large benefits to Thalys

[Momo1435]

They use of the shelf ETCS level 2, the problem is that the equipment in the trains is build by another company then the equipment of the infrastructure. It should work together since it's the European standard, but that's not the case. They all designed their own ETCS a little bit different then the other, so they won't work properly together.

And another thing about ETCS in Holland is that has problems when the trains have to switch to the ATB protection system that's in use on the regular lines. There's just to much interference between the two systems, but this has been solved by installing ETCS level 1 on the point were the train has to change from ETCS to ATB.

And even if it already would have worked the Thalys trains would still be running over the old lines. Because the SNCF only recently started installing the ETCS on the Thalys trains.

[JoKo65]

Could it be that ETCS is a big load of sh##?
Problems in Belgium, problems in Spain, problems in the Netherlands…

[Glodenox]

Every new technology has its growing pains, that doesn't mean it's bad. The standard itself is a very modern system, but apparently not well enough defined if there are interoperability problems...

It's good we're finally getting some sort of common signalisation system. It may take a while to get it going, but once it's done, it'll be great for international travel.

Greetings,
Glodenox

[Momo1435]

Hopefully the interoperability problems between the different manufactures will be resolved with the next level. The EU must set the standards even clearer, leaving no room for different interpretations.