There are 392 railway stations in the Netherlands, including 5 railway stations which are only served during events, 1 which exists only to facilitate pilgrimage to a nearby site and 1 which exists only to facilitate the Railway Museum.
NS-Poort maintains 381 stations.[1]
Stations are divided into three categories based upon the service they receive. These are, in order of decreasing importance:
On many lines, however, there may be only two categories of trains (for example, intercity and local), or just one (local). Furthermore, some local trains – despite being called stoptreinen – do not stop at all stations: two examples are the services from Groningen to Roodeschool and from Tiel to Arnhem.
On the route diagrams printed at the top of station departure sheets (see this example), intercity stations and semi-fast train stations are indicated by the letters IC and S respectively.
ProRail classify stations into 5 categories based upon the facilities available. The categories are (in English), Cathedral, Mega, Plus, Basic and Stop.[2]
The practice in the Netherlands is to write the names of stations serving two communities with a hyphen (corresponding to "and") between the two names, thus: Beek-Elsloo; and to use a space where the second term specifies one of two or more stations serving a city or town, thus: Alkmaar Noord.
Only the biggest railway stations are designated with the "Centraal" or "CS" affix and there are currently only five of them: Utrecht Centraal, Amsterdam Centraal, Rotterdam Centraal, Leiden Centraal and Den Haag Centraal (Arnhem and Breda are being upgraded to a CS because of the highspeed railconnection with Brussels and Paris). The other railway stations closest to the city centers are usually designated with a "Centrum" affix.
Almere
Also in Bloemendaal
Also in Bussum
Also in Den Haag
Geleen
Hoek van Holland
Also in Kerkrade
Koog aan de Zaan
Also in Leiden
Bussum
Bloemendaal
Santpoort
Below are stations with tracks only in one direction (or, with the indication *, have tracks in the other direction without connecting each other or only for a tourist line, a freight line or to a shunting yard), with links to track lay-out maps. See also Train station#Terminus.
Of these, only Den Haag Centraal has nearby junctions, with railways in different directions; in fact in three directions: to Den Haag HS, Voorburg and Den Haag Laan v NOI.
New stations from 2004:
New stations from 2005:
New stations from 2006:
Closing stations from 2006: Berkel en Rodenrijs, Rotterdam Bergweg, Zoetermeer Buytenweg, Zoetermeer Centrum West, Zoetermeer de Leyens, Zoetermeer delftsewallen, Zoetermeer Driemanspolder, Zoetermeer Dorp, Rotterdam Hofplein, Rotterdam Kleiweg, Leidschendam-Voorburg, Leidschenveen, Zoetermeer Leidsewallen, Zoetermeer Meerzicht, Nootdorp, Zoetermeer Palenstein, Pijnacker, Zoetermeer Seghwaert, Zoetermeer Stadhuis, Zoetermeer Voorweg, Voorburg 't Loo, Rotterdam Wilgenplas.
New stations from 2007:
New station from 2008:
New stations from 2009:
New stations from 2010:
Closing stations in 2011: Emmen Bargeres in place for that: Emmen Zuid
New stations from 2011:
Future station after 2010:
Not the platforms, but the tracks are numbered. Tracks without platform access, used for through traffic, also have a number. This number is not indicated, but it shows indirectly by the fact that in the numbering of the accessible tracks a number is skipped. Track numbers are usually increasing in the direction away from the center of the city and hence away from the main entrance(s) of the station.
A track along a long platform may have an "a" and a "b"-side, and sometimes three sections "a", "b" and "c".
At many stations, above platforms and/or at their access points, there are dynamic displays (often split-flap displays, but increasingly electronic displays) of the destination and departure time of the next train, see Centraal bediende treinaanwijzer (in Dutch).
For checking in and out with an OV-chipkaart card readers are at station entrances, halls and/or platforms. It can be recharged (increasing the credit by paying an amount) at ticket machines. The anonymous variety of the card can also be purchased here. For some minor rail operators all this does not apply yet.
Paper tickets are available from the same ticket machines; at the counter (if available) a supplement of € 0.50 per ticket (with a maximum of €1 per occasion) has to be paid. In both cases one can choose a dated or undated ticket; the latter can be useful if one has not decided yet about the travel date. If the ticket is not dated it requires a stamp from a stamp machine on the travel date.
With an e-ticket bought in advance for a specific journey one can just get on the train without any further validation of the ticket.
NS Stations is the division of Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) in charge of the operation of all 386 railway stations, i.e., also those served by other railway companies than NS Reizigers. A daughter company of NS Stations is Servex, which uses the brands Automaten, Brasserie, Burger King, Café T, Café T espresso, C'est du pain, Kiosk, mr. Pizza, Pizza Hut, Restauratie, Smullers, Het Station, Swirl's, and Wizzl, and owns Stationsfoodstore, which is an Albert Heijn franchise operating about 22 "AH to go" convenience stores on stations. Wizzl also sells train tickets. They are typically at small stations which have no separate ticket window or counter; an exception is Rotterdam, with a Wizzl at the back side of the station, while separate ticket windows are at the front side only.
Passenger comfort sometimes suffers from (homeless) beggars or pickpockets, especially in large cities. Measures taken to remedy this include installation of CCTV, locking waiting rooms in the evening, and sometimes removal of benches from station halls. Also, a valid train ticket is required to access platforms. Passengers with large luggage should note that no luggage trolleys are provided (except at the station of Schiphol airport), although platforms are accessible by elevator.
The official abbreviations of names of stations are used internally by the NS, but also on handwritten tickets; they can also conveniently be used when entering a station in the NS planner on http://www.ns.nl (but not on http://www.9292ov.nl) and are needed in some URLs, see below. In a station it can be found in the lower right corner of the yellow departure schedules. In most URLs (see below) they have to be written in lowercase, in some a capital is optional. On the departure schedules they are written in lowercase. In other cases the abbreviations are written with a capital letter. For a list sorted by abbreviation see nl:Lijst van afkortingen van Nederlandse spoorwegstations.
Stations also have a four-digit code that is used on the keypad of older ticket machines to specify a destination.
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|title= specified when using {{Cite web}}" (pdf). Network Statement 2012. ProRail. p. 165. http://www.prorail.nl/English/Documents/2666794%20NV2012%20bijgewerkt%20tm%20aanv%202%20EN.pdf. Retrieved 29 November 2011.