Железнодорожные станции Нидерландов: организация и особенности

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There are currently 401 railway stations in the Netherlands including four which are used only during special events and one which serves the National Railway Museum only. NS Stations is the body which manages and owns all railway stations in the Netherlands.

Stations are divided into two categories based upon the service they receive. These are, in order of decreasing importance:
Intercity stations, where usually all trains (except, in some cases, international services) call. The remaining stations, where only local trains (Sprinters) call. 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, intercity stations are indicated by the letters IC. ProRail classifies stations into five categories based upon the facilities available. The categories are (in English): Cathedral, Mega, Plus, Basic and Stop.

For checking in and out with an OV chipkaart card readers are at station entrances, halls and/or platforms. It can be recharged (increasing the credit by paying an amount) at ticket machines. The anonymous variety of the card can also be purchased here. For some minor rail operators all this does not apply yet. Paper tickets are available from the same ticket machines; at the counter (if available) a supplement of €0.50 per ticket (with a maximum of €1 per occasion) has to be paid. In both cases one can choose a dated or undated ticket; the latter can be useful if one has not decided yet about the travel date. If the ticket is not dated it requires a stamp from a stamp machine on the travel date. With an e ticket bought in advance for a specific journey one can just get on the train without any further validation of the ticket.

NS Stations is a Dutch company that manages and exploits all railway stations in the Netherlands.

Passenger comfort sometimes suffers from (homeless) beggars or pickpockets, especially in large cities. Measures taken to remedy this include installation of CCTV, locking waiting rooms in the evening, and sometimes removal of benches from station halls. Also, a valid train ticket is required to access platforms, at many stations enforced by gates that require an OV chipkaart to activate them. Passengers with large luggage should note that no luggage trolleys are provided (except at the station of Schiphol airport), although platforms are accessible by elevator.

The official abbreviations of names of stations are used internally by the NS, but also on handwritten tickets; they can also conveniently be used when entering a station in the NS planner and are needed in some URLs, see below. In a station it can be found in the lower right corner of the yellow departure schedules. In most URLs (see below) they have to be written in lowercase, in some a capital is optional. On the departure schedules they are written in lowercase. In other cases the abbreviations are written with a capital letter. Stations also have a four digit code that is used on the keypad of older ticket machines to specify a destination.