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NL: Kings Day/Orange Timetable - anything fun to look out for?

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Egg Centric

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Am in Netherlands for Kings Day. For physical location am staying in Zaandvoort and will be travelling in to Amsterdam, but I can sneak off for 2 or 3 hours myself if I needed to. This day NR runs a special intensive timetable which I assume means it brings all sorts of random things out of storage, a bit like British Rail used to do pre privatisation. Is there anything worth seeing? (Unusual rolling stock ideally, but weird moves would do too)

Also wtf is up with platform 14A at Centraal and where is it. Not where the signs say!
 
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RailUK Forums

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Trains tend to be longer and rolling stock planning is different, but there is no special pool of old trains they can use on trains like this, so it's going to be the same trains but different lengths and sometimes on different lines. For example you can spot electric GTW trains between Zevenaar and Arnhem where typically they only use diesel ones (usually those trains continue onto a non electrified branch line, but because they run extra trains that reverse before this branch they borrow some electric trains from another line on days like this).

Only truly unusual train will be be an excursion train running. Full route has not been announced as far as I know, except that it starts and end in Rotterdam and is expected to visit Moerdijk and Oosterhout (two freight only lines).

As for Amsterdam Centraal, platforms 11, 13 and 14b are currently out of operation due to renovation. Platform 14a is there, but it has been shortened and probably the rest of the platform is closed so it might only be accessible from the west side of the station.
 

Egg Centric

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As for Amsterdam Centraal, platforms 11, 13 and 14b are currently out of operation due to renovation. Platform 14a is there, but it has been shortened and probably the rest of the platform is closed so it might only be accessible from the west side of the station.

(Thanks for rest of answer)

Re: 14A - my friend and I missed a train last night - but there was a clear "yellow notice" up to where you'd normally go for platform 10a/11a to say to go to 10a/14a. And this can't just be put down to us being as high as a kite cause there were a couple of girls who followed the same sign. The only way it makes sense to me is as if there was a line across the building work but we didn't see any.

Any idea who to recommend clearer signage to about this cause I also have some commets about a few other stations... but in those cases its just parcity of signage. The above I think was actively misleading.
 

DanielB

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AFAIK platform 14A at Amsterdam Centraal is only accessible from the westernmost tunnel at the moment, so the sign you observed will have been the instruction to go via platform 10 from the middle tunnel to the western tunnel in order to reach 14A without passing through gatelines.
Most of the space where platform 14B used to be is now used by large steel portals for lifting building materials for the widening of the eastern tunnel and the replacement of the middle bridge to the east of the station (it now looks like this, see photo at the top of the page, that's why you couldn't access platform 14 from the middle tunnel).
 

MisterT

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@DanielB is right, the signage will lead you over platform 10 to the west tunnel and from there you can access platform 14a.
I've made the same mistake of trying to enter platform 14a from the middle tunnel myself a few times, even though I should know better by now, especially as a train driver :oops:
 
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