There is a good spread of railways in the Netherlands with frequent regular links between the major cities. Outside of the rush hours all domestic trains take bicycles.
The structure of railway operation in the Netherlands is very similar to that in Germany. There is a major train operator: Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) with a number of smaller operators, e.g.: Arriva, Veolia, and Dutch bus operators Syntus and Connexxion. The routes are shown on a map in Dutch: www.ns.nl/cgi-bin/spoorkaart/spoorkaart on the NS website. Unfortunately the English language version does not show the map. The country is quite small and so the longest journey one can make is about four and a half hours: from Groningen in the north to Maastricht in the south. Within the Netherlands the railways are very cyclist friendly, with large amounts of space on trains for fiets (Dutch for bicycle) and bike hire, secure bike parking and bike repair on many railway stations.

Bicycle parking facilities at Dordrecht station
Photo: Judith & Neil Forsyth

Trains

There are three groups of trains that are run by different organisations, but these cooperate so that booking and changing trains is simple.

Long distance international express/High speed trains
There are a number of long distance trains running from Amsterdam, Schiphol Airport or Rotterdam. Most of them only take bagged partly dismantled bikes or folders, folded and bagged and do not take tandems: Eurostar, ICE and Thalys. Information on these trains can be found on the NSHispeed website. A number of international IC trains to Germany do take unwrapped bicycles and tandems but reservation is necessary.

Domestic Intercity trains
The country is densely populated and urbanised, and train services are frequent. Both Intercity trains and the stopping trains cost the same. Dutch Intercity trains stop more often than intercity trains in other countries. Seat reservation on domestic trains is not possible. Beware, many trains consist of two parts with different destinations. Somewhere on the way to the destination, the train will be split and the two parts will continue to their respective destinations. In this case, the screens over the platform will show two destinations. On the platform Achterste deel/achter means back part of the train and voorste deel/voor means the front. Check if you are not certain. Most people in the Netherlands can speak English.

Stopping trains (Stoptrein)
As their name suggests these trundle across country and stop at every station.

Tickets

Buying a ticket for trains in the Netherlands

From a station
From a ticket machine (cheaper) or from a ticket office (more expensive). According to Mark Smith of Seat61 Dutch ticket machines are the worst in the world taking only coins and Dutch bank cards.

Online
Not possible from www.ns.nl unless you have a Dutch bank account. German Railways will sell you a ticket, but not online. Rail Europe will sell you a ticket online.

Bicycle Tickets
You can travel with your bike on the railways internally in the Netherlands (NS) on most trains during non-peak hours, i.e. you cannot travel on inland trains with your bike during the weekday morning and evening rush hours: (06:30 to 09:00 and 16:30 to 18:00), except during July and August when many Dutch seem to holiday in other countries. This bike ban does not apply to international trains, where you reserve a place. You have to buy a ticket and your bike needs one as well (6 Euro a day). Tickets can be bought from the ticket machines on stations. Putting your bike on an international train will cost you 12 Euro for a single ticket and 24 Euro for a return ticket at the time of writing and you will need to reserve a place for your bicycle, if not for yourself. It is not possible to buy these international bike tickets and make reservations online.

Passes and Rail Cards for holidaymakers
According to the Rail Europe site you can book a three days in one month Eurorail ticket for £100, but considering that the overnight Dutchflyer will bring you to any station in the Netherlands for about £75 from London, is it worth buying one? You want to cycle in the Netherlands as well, don’t you?

Website

Holland by Train – The web site seems clear and easy to use in English although the English version is only a skeleton version of the Dutch site. There is no map, for example and ticket buying is impossible online unless you have a Dutch bank account. No problem, use the website to find train times and then buy your tickets at a station or at one of the British ticket sales offices. However, if one is travelling on farther to Germany, for example the web site is less helpful for the cycling community. The web site does not recognise all the English names for German cities, e.g. “Cologne”. It only suggests ICEs which do not take bicycles. If you try cheating and look up train times from Amsterdam to Venlo on the Dutch German border it will give you a sensible train. If you then use the NS website for the second part of the journey from Venlo to Cologne, the site suggests a trip to Düsseldorf and an ICE after that! The answer is to check the DB site for the journey from Venlo to Cologne, but… Sometimes my wife Judith wonders whether I should not get a life.

Putting bikes on trains

A typical Dutch railway footbridge at Geldermalsen station.

Dutch rolling stock showing excellent access to bicycle compartments

In our limited experience Dutch rolling stock has easy access for bicycles and adequate storage space. The newer carriages allow entry on the same level and the older carriages have wide doors to the bike areas and plenty of room for bicycle storage.

Bicycle space on a Dutch Intercity train
Judith & Neil Forsyth

 

Ships

Waiting for a ferry near Dordrecht
Photograph by Judith & Neil Forsyth

Many of the towns and cities and the intervening farmland in the southern Netherlands are former islands and sandbanks in the Rhine delta. Much of it is drained, but there are still stretches of water to cross. Obviously in a land full of excellent civil engineers there are bridges and tunnels galore, but sometimes there are ferries as well, all of which take bikes and pedestrians, but not always cars or lorries.

Bicycle and pedestrian ferry near Dordrecht
Photograph by Judith & Neil Forsyth

Diversions

The country is mostly flat and much of it man-made, however the views of the sky on any line running across countryside with the pale, clear, Dutch light, as seen in landscape paintings by the Dutch masters are often magnificent.