2015: The Start of Operations for a Replacement Railway Station in the Netherlands

February 28, 2015

A newly built railway station was opened in the city of Delft in the Netherlands’ province of South Holland. This city has played a huge role in Dutch history over the centuries and is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Netherlands. Delft — located between Rotterdam to the southeast and the Hague to the northwest — is also squarely situated within one of the world’s most densely populated regions.

The current main railway station in Delft replaced one that had been in operation in that vicinity since 1885. That older building remains intact as one of the city’s historic landmarks and it now houses an Italian restaurant. This version of the Delft railway station replaced a smaller station that first went into service in 1847.

The present-day Delft railway station was designed by Francine Marie Jeanne Houben of the international architecture firm Mecanoo. A graduate of the Delft University of Technology, Houben was founding partner of Mecanoo in 1984 and also serves as the firm’s creative director.

A key component of the current Delft railway station is its 1.4-mile (2.3-kilometer) underground rail tunnel. Also, as shown in the above photo, the inside of the station features a large map of Delft on the ceiling.

Along with serving the trains operated by the Amsterdam-Rotterdam railway (the oldest railway line in the Netherlands), this station contains a total of eight stands for buses. In addition, there is free parking available at this station for 8,700 bicycles altogether. The Delft railway station is managed by Nederlandse Spoorwegen (Dutch Railways), a state-owned company that has long been the country’s leading passenger railway operator.

Photo Credit: M8scho (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en)

Additional information on the current Delft railway station and its predecessors is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delft_railway_station