Rail Travel in the Netherlands: Trains, the OV-chipkaart and How to Get Around

Amsterdam Centraal, the best-known station in the country. (Photo: C messier, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Trains are one of the best ways to see the Netherlands. The network runs to 3,434 km of line and reaches practically everywhere, with roughly as many stations as the country has municipalities. It is a busy, well-maintained commuter network with a few excellent international links, and it is almost entirely paperless: you travel with a contactless card, the OV-chipkaart, or a phone.

Who runs the trains

Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS), Dutch Railways, runs nearly all the intercity trains and most of the stopping trains (Sprinters) on the core network. It lost its monopoly in the 1990s, and several regional lines, mostly in the north and east and in Limburg, are now run by other companies, often under regional brands: Arriva, Keolis, Qbuzz and others. The track itself belongs to ProRail. For a traveller the differences hardly matter: the same card and the same journey planner work on all of them.

• Sprinters stop at (nearly) every station. On lines that also have intercity trains, an intercity is usually faster.
• Intercity trains, all run by NS on electrified lines, link the big cities and skip the small towns. Utrecht, in the middle of the country, is the closest thing to a hub.
• Intercity Direct uses the one high-speed line, from Schiphol Airport past Rotterdam toward the Belgian border. Between Schiphol and Rotterdam it needs a small supplement.
• International trains run to Belgium, France, the UK and Germany: Eurostar, and the German ICE, which also needs a supplement for domestic journeys.
• Night trains are back since the 2020s, mostly from Amsterdam Centraal, including the ÖBB NightJet to Vienna and Innsbruck.

The NS/ÖBB NightJet from Vienna arriving at Amsterdam Centraal. (Photo: Rob Dammers, CC BY 2.0)

Domestic journeys are short: rarely more than 2½ hours, and even the longest, Delfzijl to Vlissingen, is around 5½ hours. So there are no sleeper cars and no catering on domestic trains, but almost every train has a conductor. Trains have first class (marked 1: more room, better seats, usually power sockets) and second class (marked 2: fine outside rush hour). Some have silent carriages.

Planning a trip

The NS journey planner, on the NS website or app, is the most reliable way to plan. It covers the other operators' trains and door-to-door trips by bus, tram and metro, and shows how busy each train is expected to be. 9292 is an alternative.

Avoid the rush hours if you can: Monday to Friday, 06:30–09:00 and 16:00–18:30, and above all the morning peak from 07:30. King's Day (27 April) and the day of the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort are notoriously busy. A ticket never guarantees a seat.

Tickets and the OV-chipkaart

All Dutch public transport (trains, buses, trams and metros) uses the OV-chipkaart ("public transport chip card"). Domestic fares are charged by distance, with no peak pricing for a standard fare, and you can take any train on your route without a reservation. There are three kinds of card:

• a disposable card, a single-use ticket, which costs extra;
• an anonymous card, the one most visitors should buy on arrival: reloadable, bought at ticket offices and machines, with a small non-refundable fee;
• a personal card, with a photo, needed for discounts and season tickets but requiring a Benelux or German address or bank account.

An anonymous OV-chipkaart (top) and a personal one (bottom). (Photo: Moeerd, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The rule to remember: check in before you board and check out when you leave, by tapping the card on a reader post or a barrier gate. At bigger stations the gates open only for a valid card; checking out at the same station within 35 minutes costs nothing. Forget to check out and you pay more, which is why automated announcements remind you: "Reist u met de OV-chipkaart? Vergeet dan niet om uit te checken." On international trips, check out at the last Dutch station your international ticket does not cover.

Barrier gates at Leeuwarden, each marked with the operator it belongs to. (Photo: JoachimKohler-HB, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Ways to pay less:

• Skip the ticket machines: tickets from the NS app or website, or pay-as-you-go on a card, avoid the machine surcharge. You can also tap in with a contactless bank card.
• Day passes and regional tickets (such as the Amsterdam and Holland travel tickets) can pay for themselves in a couple of trips.
• Off-peak deals booked at least a day ahead give large discounts, but cannot be changed.
• Discount subscriptions save a lot for frequent travellers, but need a personal card and a bank account.
• Children under 4 travel free if they do not take a seat, and children 4 to 11 travel cheaply with an adult.

Eurostar and night trains are different: they are priced like international travel, need reservations, and do not take the OV-chipkaart or most Dutch passes.

On board

Doors open with a button. Icons beside each door show what the carriage has, such as toilets, Wi-Fi or bicycle space. Keep your card or ticket to hand for inspection. Luggage goes on the racks or, often forgotten, under the seats, never in the aisle. Station stops are announced in Dutch, and on many trains in English too.

A platform display: destination, stops and train length. (Photo: Fantaglobe11, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Bicycles need an off-peak bicycle ticket and can travel only outside the weekday rush hours (at any time in July and August). Folding bikes, folded, travel free.

Bikes and connections

The Netherlands is one of the most bike-friendly countries on Earth, and stations show it: most have bike parking, and Utrecht Centraal has the largest bike garage, with room for 12,500 bicycles. Stations are usually the hub of local buses and trams, and the same card works on them.

Bike and train go together. (Photo: Slaunger, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The station bike-rental scheme, OV-fiets, is convenient but open only to residents, since it needs a personal card and a Dutch bank account. Ferries to the Wadden Islands do not take the OV-chipkaart.

When things go wrong

Signal or switch failures (sein-/wisselstoring), planned track work (werkzaamheden) and collisions can stop trains. Check the Disruptions tab in the NS app or the NS website; when a line is closed, rail replacement buses run. If a train is cancelled or badly delayed you may be entitled to compensation, as long as you kept to the operator's conditions. The Dutch are famously strict about punctuality: five minutes late counts as a calamity here.

The railways are safe. Crime is rare beyond occasional pickpocketing, but if you feel threatened, find a conductor. Since August 2021, NS has also run a number for passengers who feel unsafe on a train or at a station: +31 6 1318 1318, by phone, text or WhatsApp.

A short history

The Dutch came late to railways. With a fine network of canals and horse-drawn passenger barges (trekschuiten), the country did not obviously need trains, and shipping companies lobbied against them. The first line opened on 20 September 1839, when the locomotive De Arend ("The Eagle") pulled a train 16 km from Amsterdam to Haarlem in 30 minutes. Imported English engineers built it on a broad gauge of 1,945 mm, not the standard gauge the neighbours used.

A replica of De Arend, the first Dutch locomotive. (Photo: Unknown author Unknown author, CC0)

Lines were built piecemeal by private companies until the Railway Act of 1860, when the state began funding a planned set of lines labelled A to K. Rival companies competed hard until the two biggest joined in August 1937 as the state-owned Nederlandsche Spoorwegen. Lines were electrified from 1908, the last regular steam train ran on 7 January 1958, and in the 1990s NS was split from the track owner, ProRail, and competition began. The first rival, Lovers Rail between Haarlem and Amsterdam, lasted only from 1996 to 1999; the regional lines that followed did better.

Sources

• "Rail travel in the Netherlands" from Wikivoyage, by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changed: rewritten in hubnx's own words and condensed; the lists of lines, stations and rolling stock and the ticket prices left out (prices change; check NS); each photo under its own licence, credited in its caption. This page is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.