The heavily used Dutch railway is considered to be particularly safe, serious accidents only occur occasionally. Very heavy ones with dozens of people injured, like now at Voorschoten, especially. The last example was in 2012 in Amsterdam.
Most serious train accidents nowadays involve collisions on level crossings, such as in 2018 at Oss with the infamous Stint accident. Four children died. In 2020, a train driver died at Hooghalem when a tractor crossed an unguarded level crossing and was caught by the train between Assen and Hoogeveen. The train could no longer brake.
The train driver also died at Dalfsen in 2016 when the train drove over a crossing cherry picker. The train set ended up in the field next to the track.
Westerpark Amsterdam
Accidents in which a train collides with another train or with track material, as is the case today, are much rarer. On 21 April 2012, a sprinter collided head-on with an intercity train near Westerpark in Amsterdam just before half past six in the evening. The sprinter’s driver had missed a red signal. Hundreds of people were on both trains. One person died and at least 117 people were injured, dozens of them seriously.
On 24 September 2009, two freight trains collided near Barendrecht. An NS train with passengers on its way to Brussels was just able to stop, although it was still hit by a piece of debris. Both drivers of the freight trains were seriously injured, one of them died.
Twenty years ago, a train collision in Roermond left 36 injured. The driver of an NS slow train suffered a heart attack, causing the train to come to a standstill on the track. The train was hit by a freight train. The driver was injured, but the cause of death was later determined to be a heart attack.
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Dozens dead
For train disasters with dozens of deaths, we have to go back much further. The Schiedam train disaster of 4 May 1976 killed 24 people when two trains collided. Five people were seriously injured, dozens slightly injured.
The most notorious disaster is that at Harmelen in 1962. On the morning of Monday 8 January, two passenger trains on the Utrecht-Woerden line collided in foggy conditions. They drove at full speed. 93 people did not survive the drama. This is the largest railway accident in Dutch history.
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