Amsterdam Central Station will undergo extended reconstruction to accommodate more passengers — but this could be a huge problem for the Eurostar connection between Amsterdam and London.
In a letter to the House of Representatives, the Minister for the Environment Vivianne Heijnen foreshadowed that trains between Amsterdam and London might be put on ice for years to come.
What does that mean? Well, the plan is to wrap up the construction work in 2028. Say, what?!
A missing platform
The problem? Platform 15b at Amsterdam Centraal where Eurostars depart to the UK will be used as a building site during the construction works.
The platform is where security checks and passport controls prepare passengers for their international train journey.
Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any feasible alternatives as of now, says Minister Heijnen.
Pressing for a solution
Heijnen writes that a year-long interruption of the Amsterdam-London train connection is ‘unacceptable’ and presses railway operator, Prorail, to find a solution.
Prorail is currently on a hunt to find an alternative location somewhere within Amsterdam and says more will be known in the summer. Vague, much?
Will you be affected by this possible cancellation of the Amsterdam-London Eurostar? Tell us in the comments!
Shockingly disappointed! Can’t be serious, not only this transport option is convenient as an alternative to flying, it also seemed a proper response to the challenge of building greener ways to travel.
Why don’t they use Utrecht Central
Lol, just use Rotterdam Centraal….
I take this train several times a year. Why not use another platform for the building site?
Other than that, if they continue to sell tickets to London by offering a combination of a Thalys to Brussels and then a Eurostar to London, not much is lost. Checks can be performed in Brussels. It would make the journey longer but check-in times in the stations of Amsterdam and Rotterdam would be 9ne hour shorter, so total travel time would go up minimally. The current Eurostar service has a standard stop of I believe 30 minutes in Brussels.
By the way, with their endless check in times, and the long stop in Brussels, it looks a bit as if Eurostar doesn’t take its high speed claim quite seriously.
This latest move by NS/ProRail does not help to correct that impression.
Ridiculous. They need to expand the facilities to cope with the true potential market of 12 trains a day.
Just started using the Eurostar between London and Amsterdam and what a wonderful alternative it is to flying, especially with the recent misery at the airports leading to cancellations at the moment. Making this service unavailable is unacceptable, surely another solution can be found?!
Why not move Eurostar to AMS zuid?
Agree, this makes more sense. Amsterdam Zuid or Schipol!
Unreal. In the south side of the city (Amsterdam Zuid station) temporary provisions could be made. The Dutch these days a more talkers than doers. Too many stakeholders involved, with non matching agendas.
What about Sloterdijk station as an alternative? I go fairly often London to Amsterdam to visit my daughter
…and when is this work supposed to be happening?! I have a ticket booked to see family for a birthday soon.
I just wish we could ditch the annoying, time consuming and unnecessary passport and security checks. If you can catch a train from Amsterdam to Milan without those checks, why not to the UK…. All the UK needs to do is join Schengen.
Maybe they can use the airport station?
As already stated above, the eurostar already stops at Rotterdam central station so hopefully the service can just continue to London to and from Rotterdam (as now anyway). They would be truly insane to cancel the whole service for years: this is a brilliant way to travel, much more comfortable and green than flying. We have been using it for years (even when we still had to change at Brussels) and will never fly again unless they take this service away and there is no alternative.
My understanding is that this was a decision by Eurostar Group which includes Thalys. The cynical among us might say this is a way of having more trains available for other routes, probably in France since SNCF is the majority shareholder with 55%.