AFTER several delays, Dutch infrastrucutre manager Prorail opened the new station at Utrecht Vaartsche Rijn on August 23.

THE latest phase in the reconstruction of The Hague Central station was completed on August 22 with the inauguration of new platforms for RandstadRail Line E, which links the Hague with Rotterdam and Slinge.

A major capacity enhancement project south of Amsterdam was completed in the early hours of August 10, when Dutch infrastructure manager ProRail reopened the Schiphol Airport - Duivendrecht/Amsterdam Bijlmer Arena line following five years of reconstruction work.

DUTCH infrastructure manager Prorail has awarded Strukton Systems a contract to install the Dutch ATB-Vv train protection system on around 400 signals on the Rotterdam - Venlo and Alkmaar - Maastricht lines.

NETHERLANDS Railways (NS) will introduce a high-frequency service on the Amsterdam - Eindhoven corridor and step up train frequency on other routes in December 2017.

NETHERLANDS Railways (NS) concluded a contract worth more than €800m with Alstom on July 15 for 79 single-deck Inter-City New Generation (ICNG) EMUs after a court rejected a legal challenge from Siemens.

THE Municipality of Amsterdam confirmed on July 8 that the metro North-South Line will open on July 22 2018, 16 years after the start of construction on the troubled project.

MRDH, the regional public transport authority in The Hague and Rotterdam, has directly awarded Rotterdam Electric Tram (RET) a 10-year contract to operate and maintain Rotterdam's tram and metro networks.

THE Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Province of Limburg have agreed to jointly fund a €58m project to construct a second track on the Heerlen - Landgraaf line, which is used by Heerlen- Kerkrade regional services and cross-border trains from Heerlen to Herzogenrath in Germany.

RAIL freight in the Netherlands continued to make a strong recovery in 2015, according to statistics published by the Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS) on June 21, which show overall volumes increased by 7% compared with 2014 to 42 million tonnes.