People who travel by train between Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Breda will get the first of the newest intercity of the Dutch Railways. This ICNG will be equipped with WiFi, sockets, comfortable seats and USB connections. The newest showpiece of the NS will test drive between Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Breda in the first half of this year.
After that, the ICNG will also partly transport people over the high-speed line between The Hague, Rotterdam and Eindhoven. Step by step, the Amsterdam-Brussels and Rotterdam-Leeuwarden-Groningen routes will also be addressed. ICNG stands for InterCity New Generation
According to the NS, the modern trainsets are an improvement on their predecessors in several respects. The ICNG combines a high speed (200 kilometers per hour) with improved accessibility, it sounds optimistic.
Vehicle officially approved
Commissioning came a step closer on Friday, now that the Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate (ILT) has officially approved the vehicle for use on the Dutch railways. Before a train is allowed to run in the Netherlands, the train manufacturer must first carry out admission tests. After extensive testing at home and abroad, the ICNG has now been officially approved. The train is based on the Coradia concept of the French train manufacturer Alstom. More than 2400 trains of this concept are already running in several countries.
Maarten Bakker, who is responsible for the introduction within NS, expects a lot from the test phase: “It is important, because with passengers in the timetable you can only really see how the train performs in practice and make further adjustments.”
Alstom develops and builds 99 fast Intercity trains for NS, with a total of 33,000 seats. Twenty of these Intercity trains are also suitable for the Belgian rail network. In this way, the connection to Brussels can be further improved, a long-cherished wish of people who want to go south by train. Due to various factors, the project has been delayed.