Railway stations in the Netherlands

There are 397 railway stations in the Netherlands, including five railway stations which are only served during events, one of those only to used during rush hourite and another one only to facilitate the Railway Museum.

NS Stations is managing all stations in The Netherlands.

Stations are divided into two categories based upon the service they receive. These are, in order of decreasing importance:

There are exceptions to this categorization. Some local trains – despite being called stoptreinen – do not stop at all stations: two examples are the services from Groningen to Roodeschool and from Tiel to Arnhem.

On the route diagrams printed at the top of station departure sheets (see this example), intercity stations and semi-fast train stations are indicated by the letters IC and S respectively.

ProRail classify stations into 5 categories based upon the facilities available. The categories are (in English): Cathedral, Mega, Plus, Basic and Stop.

In this order, these are the ten largest Dutch railway stations by number of passengers a day:

Stations are generally named after the town they serve. In case a town is served by multiple stations, additional names are given to specify the station's position such as:

In the opposite situation with one station serving two communities, both community names are given, separated by a hyphen, e.g. Krommenie-Assendelft.

Currently only six stations are designated Centraal: Utrecht Centraal, Amsterdam Centraal, Rotterdam Centraal, Leiden Centraal, Den Haag Centraal and Arnhem Centraal.

The stations below all have revenue passenger tracks running in only one direction. Those marked with a * do have tracks in both direction but one direction is only used for freight and/or as a tourist line, except for Groningen and Enschede who have passenger service in both directions but no through services. See also Train station#Terminus.

Future planned stations after 2016:

Not the platforms, but the tracks are numbered. In Dutch communication, NS refers to "spoor 1" ("track 1"), etc. while in English communication, NS refers to "platform 1" where "track 1" is meant (hence all island platforms have two numbers). Tracks without platform access, used for through traffic, also have a number. This number is not indicated, but it shows indirectly by the fact that in the numbering of the accessible tracks a number is skipped. Track numbers are usually increasing in the direction away from the center of the city and hence away from the main entrance(s) of the station.

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