With the Blue Tram from Amsterdam to Zandvoort

In 1911 the beach lover could buy a ‘Vacancy Subscription’ from Amsterdam via Haarlem to Zandvoort from the Electric Railway Company (ESM). At the time, a one-way ticket cost 0.60 cents. In that year the ESM carried 2,460,525 passengers, ten years later that had almost doubled.

The card still bears the proud statement: ’80 to 100 trains a day in each direction’. A beautiful photo is printed with it of the railway viaduct at Aerdenhout: the slim tram consisting of a motor car and a carriage stands high above the bulb fields. The large windows give the tram a nice openness and inside the glossy wooden furniture was luxuriously upholstered.

At that time, the Amsterdam-Haarlem-Zandvoort connection grew into a successful line, one of the busiest in Europe. The passengers are transported in unprecedented luxury tram cars.” And “the abolition is still regretted by many.” These commendable words are contained in the richly illustrated, informative edition To Zandvoort by tram by Wim Beukenkamp, ​​published by De Nieuwe Blauwe Tram Foundation, which was established in 2016 with the aim of preserving the electric trams “as cultural-historical heritage”. The foundation publishes books for this purpose, this one about Amsterdam-Zandvoort is the fifth in the series, and the NZH Transport Museum is located in Haarlem about the history of the Noord- and Zuid-Hollandsche Vervoer Maatschappij.

‘Short-sighted policy thinking’

Last August 31, it was 65 years ago that the tram line was terminated. In the first half of the last century, NZH electric trams provided the transport of passengers in an enormously extensive network that connected Volendam, Amsterdam and Haarlem with Scheveningen. Since 1632, the oldest public transport connection in our country has been located between Amsterdam and Haarlem, both cities were accessible by a “Trekvaart, padt and Wagenweg”. From that “Wagenweg” the postal wagon services grew, followed by the steam train (1839) and the electric tram, from 1899. In that year the Eerste Nederlandsche Electrische Tram-Maatschappij (ENET) starts with a tram service from Haarlem via Aerdenhout to Zandvoort, to which the Leidsevaart a depot and a power station are being built in Haarlem. Electric trams from Amsterdam have been connected here since 1904.

Beukenkamp writes enthusiastically and lovingly about the electric trams and how they were a formidable competitor for the railways until the 1950s. To the great amusement of the travelers, train drivers and tram drivers even held unofficial competitions on the Sloterdijk and Haarlem routes. The railway ran where it still runs, the tram lines were on the side of the roadway.

According to Beukenkamp, ​​the discontinuation of the electric tram to and from Zandvoort was a sign of “short-sighted policy thinking”. Politicians at the time saw in trams an annoying obstacle that stood in the way of the bright future of the car. Trams even had to go and buses came in their place. The Netherlands had to ‘bus’.

The route or the line network initially started in Amsterdam on the Spui in front of the Maagdenhuis and ran in Amsterdam over the Spuistraat, Raadhuisstraat, Westermarkt, Admiraal de Ruijterweg and Sloterdijk. This is also where the stops were. After the stop in Halfweg, it continued via the Amsterdamse Poort in Haarlem, then through the Tempeliersstraat and Heemstede-Aerdenhout station and on to Bentveld, with Tram station Zandvoort as the final stop.

The tram was called ‘Blue Tram’ because from 1924 the main colors were Prussian blue and gray. With its 60 meters in length, the Zandvoort tram formed an annoying obstacle at the busy intersections and the speed was not an issue either: it reached 60 km per hour. Historical photos show how the tram squeezes through the narrow buildings in, for example, Halfweg and Haarlem. In Halfweg, even the Catholic Church of Our Lady of Birth had to be demolished in favor of the tram.

The municipality of Amsterdam was most rigorous in the run-up to the end of the tram and to make some routes tram-free. In 1957 the curtain fell for the NZH trams and buses took their place. The municipal tram line 17 that ran over the Rozengracht was also killed in those years. However, this already returned in 1962 after the many complaints to the Municipal Transport Company (GVB) about the buses that were constantly stuck in traffic.