netherlands

The Dutch Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate have called on help from the police to enforce a 40km/h speed restriction down from the usual 110km/h at Sliedrecht Baanhoek. Trains are required to drive slower as sensors have been fitted in the area to measure deformation of the embankment.

De politie gaat de snelheid van treinen controleren bij station Baanhoek in Sliedrecht. Vanwege een verzakking aan het talud mogen treinen daar niet harder rijden dan 40 kilometer per uur. Volgens de inspectie houden machinisten zich niet aan de snelheid.

A bizarre sight, seeing a police officer at a train station with a laser speed measurement gun.

Earlier today GoVolta's first passenger service departed Amsterdam Centraal from platform 8 at 08:34. Since I've moved out of the Netherlands, I couldn’t film the inaugural trip. Fortunately, as always, Dylan's Depot is quick with their videos and had one out a few hours after the train left.

In the video we see 8 ex-NMBS I10 carriages being pulled by TrainCharter Service's Alsthom 1700, number 101001. The class 1700's were taken out of regular passenger service with the last one operated by NS in 2023. Now with the GoVolta service you can once again ride with these locomotives up until Bad Bentheim where the locomotive is swapped for a Siemens Vectron capable for running in Germany. In a video recorded by Trainspotter RRX we can see this one used today is RailPool operated Vectron, number 193 828.

As for the eight carriages, out of the presumably 13 purchased from NMBS, the exterior sports the new GoVolta livery with scenery from various cities. We were able to get a sneak-peak before the launch through LinkedIn posts by GoVolta and the CEO.From the quick view of the interior shown in the video by Dylan's Depot we can see that most of it is left unchanged from when NMBS used the carriages.

The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) finds it accepetable for ProRail, the Dutch rail infrastructure manager, to override already allocated railway capacity for urgent military transport if required by both the Ministry of Defence and Ministiry of Infrastructure and Water Management. This is related to the article published by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management from October last year where it was highlighted that the Dutch railways are not designed for military transport or to withstand sabotage and cyber attacks.

After a week of snow in the Netherlands, the train schedules have been heavily affected, even as the weather improves, NS still expects delays in getting their rolling stock operational. They shared some numbers that might be interesting, approximately 400 trains need maintenance each week out of their entire fleet, and at this time, they have a backlog of 700 trains. Each train goes for maintenance once every three months.

During the winter timetable, a portion of the switches are taken out of operation as a precaution. Out of 4900 switches used in regular operation, 2500 were available for use. Others are locked in place to accommodate train routes set during the winter timetable, which makes the maintenance location unreachable.

ProRail and NS also have the option to use the extreme winter timetable, which takes out 92% of switches, leaving trains operational on only a few routes. This didn't seem to be used last week despite the heavy snow.