In mid May twelve members and former members of the British association Railfuture enjoyed a group vIsit to the Netherlands, staying in Amersfoort, a medium-sized town east of Utrecht and on the main line from Rotterdam and Amsterdam to Berlin and beyond.

We were on a learning curve – even though nearly all of us were experienced travellers. For example, we found that one can now go contactless on Dutch public transport – which made life easy if we used the bus outside our hotel to reach the station – or, in the other direction on an inter-urban bus route to the tram stop in Utrecht Science Park.

There was an alternative – one of our colleagues went on lIne and purchased a public transport card before leaving the UK.

The Netherlands is well-known for efficient integrated public transport, but visitors to the country may need more guidance on how to use it. A few years ago I would find a combined ticket and information office on a major Dutch station staffed by both rail and bus employees. At Utrecht they now have separate offices at opposite ends of the concourse.

At Amersfoort there train information kiosk but you have to go through the barrier to reach it. When we asked about bus information we were told by a member of railway staff who happened to be passing that the bus operator had an office “next to Starbucks.” When we found it, overlooking the large bus station,, the lady was very helpful, even giving us timetable booklets – something which many British bus operators have given up producing!

On my previous visit to Arnhem there was a useful tourist information office next to the station ticket office. The tourist office has now moved to a city centre church and its former premises are empty.

On the Sunday most of our group headed to Apeldoorn for a ride on the Veluwsch Stoomtrein which uses its own platform in the mainline station. This well-run heritage line was busy but, although we had not booked on line as a lot of visitors do, the staff were happy to sell us traditional tickets and clip On the outward jouney this was simplemthem.fThe Veluwe is a national park and the steam train takes you through undulating fields and forests and gives a one-hour break at Beeksbergen foy you to admire the impressive collection of locomotives and stock.

Several coffees and slices of apple cake later, four of us decided to spend the rest of our afternoon at Het Loo – the palace and park which is of particular interest to English people because we invited its owner, William of Orange, to become our King William III in 1689. It was easy to catch a bus from Apeldoorn station paying with our bank cards) but on the way back a bus we had planned to catch sailed past us at the stop! Some local people explained to us that this local service had to be booked in advance; and using my basic self-taught Dutch I was indeed able to confirm that from a footnote on the timetable poster in the shelter.

Another highlight for most of us was the national railway museum in the historical Maliebaan station in Utrecht. It had been expanded considerably since the time of my previous visit in 1998 and an hourly electric multiple unit shuttle took us there from the mainline station.

For all of us it was the first time we had used the Eurostar platform at Rotterdam Centraal. On the outward journey this was simple as we had already gone through all the controls at St Pancras International. We allowed ourselves plenty of time on the return journey, saw the station staff putting a fence across the platform (which interestingly was once the platform used by local trains to and from Hoek van Holland) and were checked in a purpose-built annexe where we sat and waited till 10 minutes before our Eurostar was due from Amsterdam.

Rail has to be a sensible option nowadays to visit this country just across the North Sea.

Trevor Garrod