Train Cab Ride NL / Amsterdam - Leiden - Rotterdam - Roosendaal / VIRM Intercity / Oct 2017

Train Drivers View on the intercity service from Amsterdam to Roosendaal. Yup, it’s finally here: the long ride many of you have been asking for. I think this is one of the longest ride I can record at this moment. As a train driver in Holland you must do exams for knowing the tracks so you won’t drive through the whole county in the first couple of years. Anyhow, I hope you’ll enjoy this new video!
At 17.04 we depart perfectly on time from our starting point, Amsterdam Central Station. The train manager will make the announcements in the train and I will only announce the small stations and if needed extra stops because of red signals or other delays. One small problem: the installation is not working from my cabin and that was not reported yet. So, before we find out we’re already in Schiedam. Hence: all my small announcements (including the special one on Leiden) are all for nothing. That is why you can hear me laugh on our arrival in Delft. ;)
On our way to Roosendaal we will meet lots and lots of wet tracks which means they can be a little a bit slippery. Especially when there’s dew on the tracks or when it starts to rain slowly the drops of water combined with the leaves that have fallen from the trees create the perfect situation for delays. Luckily for us we are able to maintain on schedule for the full ride! But still, even now we arrive on all stations on time sometimes we’ll keep the train on its full speed for a while because we weren’t able to accelerate without problems.
Because of the length of the video I won’t be going to much in detail today. The only extra thing I want to say is that after we’ve departed from Rotterdam Blaak we speed up our train to 100km/h until all the junctions on our way to Rotterdam Lombardijen are behind us. This brings more comfort to the passengers. Not to forget our train manager who’s walking through the train.
After Dordrecht we are bound for the final stop of this video. Because there’s a lot of time to arrive on Roosendaal when we’ve passed Lage Zwaluwe we can speed up the train and shut down the engines very early on the ride. This causes the train to slow down to 80km/h just before we should hit the brakes for the 80km/h sign.
If you have any questions about the route, train, tracks or whatever. Don’t hesitate to contact me via the comments. Have a very good weekend and stay tuned for the next video! Cheers!
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