Notes

One day, when I’m particularly bored, I’m going to post some of the nicest pictures of rail lines I have were just no train would appear. This is a nice example, although of course I didn’t expect a train here to begin with.

Thanks to globalization, traffic between the port of Antwerp and the Rhine-Ruhr-Area is constantly increasing. It is the official policy of the EU to move as much traffic from the roads onto rails as possible. Finally, the Montzenroute’s capacity is not unlimited either. The solution seems obvious: Completely refurbish and re-open the Iron Rhine. Belgium is strictly supporting this, Germany has agreed to it not long ago, and the Netherlands don’t want to. There is a number of reasons for that: The line goes through a nature preservation area, and also along many houses that were built under the assumption that no trains would ever start rolling here again. It also does not connect anything really important in the Netherlands, and it’s competition to the recently opened Betuweroute, a dutch rail line also with the goal to connect the german Rhine-Ruhr-Area with a north sea port, only in this case with dutch Rotterdam. An international court of arbitration, however, has granted Belgium the right to use the line due to the original contract of 1839. The latest conference of government representatives dealing with the issue decided (not for this first time) only to meet again in three months…