Netherlands 1940–1955

To keep the writing of On Rail a bit more manageable, I have written it in fifteen year periods, from 1925 to 1940, 1940 to 1955, and will write (hopefully) from 1955 to 1970 and 1970 to 1985.

In the beginning of July 1939, we arrived in Holland and travelled widely to visit family as well as settling down in Heerenveen, Frisia (the Dutch province of Friesland). All our travelling was by rail of course in those days. It was summer and many people were on holidays. We went to see my uncle Kees in Venlo, where he was stationmaster. With his son Gerrit, we hiked around the area. The great attraction was the border with Germany, only a couple of kilometers away from where they lived, and seeing a foreign country! I saw a bit of the Maas buurt Spoorweg (MBS, Venlo–Nijmegen) which was really a roadside tramway. I also saw rails in the street in Venlo of the standard gauge and learned later this was a NS (Netherlands Railways) branch line.

After the economic depression of the early thirties, most tramways and railways were struggling: railway branch lines were closed down, stations closed, tramways changed to buses, closed down or changed to internal combustion traction.

I managed to take a few photos but nearly not as many as I would have liked. There was nobody to encourage you, to guide you in this railway interest, not as we know now. On top of that I soon acquired a bike and as Holland is a rather flat country with excellent bike paths and short distances, most of my travel was going to be on the pushbike in the coming years.

The suburb we settled in at Heerenveen was just being sewered. Continental contractors, who had to shift large quantities of earth and sand, etc., used 60 cm gauge portable track and tip trucks. The track was generally the first thing they put down when beginning a sewerage project. What fun we boys had when the workmen had gone home for the day, lifting the trucks back onto the track and pushing them around. It is a wonder there were not more accidents.

Heerenveen was the headquarters of the Nederlandse Tramweg Maatschappij (NTM or the “Friese Tram”). It had an extensive rail network with the workshop in Drachten. The NTM was trying out motor locomotives and railmotors but many trams were still steam. Heerenveen was an important tramway centre, next to the railway station. The NTM, which was the same gauge as the NS, took over railway goods wagons for places away from the railway and at times the NTM rolling stock was used on the NS lines in Frisia.

I liked the system very much, the spoked wheels of their rolling stock, the variety of their passenger cars and their goods rolling stock. I never saw much of their railmotors, only occasionally a little yellow four-wheeler hauling one of their little box cars. The latter had a wheelbase which looked almost shorter than the width of the gauge, with a little square box on top of it. During the war some of them were fitted with a gas generator in one corner, which must have severely reduced the loading capacity of those little vans.

All goods vans carried the advertising sign of Douwe Egberts, a coffee and tobacco factory in Joure (always called “de” Joure). It was very distinct and typical Frisian. Another advertisement was “Persil blijft Persil” along the roof of vans. There was a lot of advertising along the roofs of tramway rolling stock, such as Turmac (cigarettes), Van Nelle (tobacco) and Van Houten (cocoa).

In September ‘39 the mobilisation of the Dutch army took place and I was frequently at the railway station to see all the military activity. Horses and road trucks were requisitioned and put on rail for transport to depots. Reservists were on the move and later the military were also coming and going on furlough.

I also took an interest in foreign rolling stock in the goods yard, to see their markings and wonder where they came from and what it was like there.

The nearby tramway station was equally busy. Much shunting took place as trams originated here for two directions, to de Joure and to Drachten and beyond. The locomotives, square ones with enclosed motion gear, had to change ends, the conductor’s van had to be placed at the back, a few goods wagons had to be handed over, etc. There was always a hustle and a bustle around the tram station.

A local simpleton was there too (wasn’t that the same everywhere), “Gekke Gerrit”. At one stage this fellow acquired a whistle similar to those used by the conductors of the NTM when giving shunting signals. This whistle was taken off him after he caused some unscheduled departures of trams.

My father came home in December 1939. One day he took me to Groningen, unfortunately going by bus because the tram was too slow. The only thing that I remember of this trip is that I was given a bogie closed van with spoked wheels in O gauge (Märklin!).

A much older cousin of mine was called up during the mobilisation and his family shifted to Utrecht, where this cousin was based. Thus there was more reason for our family to stay in Utrecht for a few days on our way to my father’s people in the South of the Netherlands.

It was always an experience to go back to Friesland again. One always had to change trains in Zwolle, as the train from “Holland” went on to Groningen. The train for Friesland stood ready across the platform, and people raced across to secure a seat. Within minutes there was that typical Frisian atmosphere then, the language spoken was different, and there was that smell of a mixture of “Heerenbaai” (a pipe tobacco, which came in huge kilo packets from Douwe Egberts) and the farm smell of a Frisian dairy farm. It was unique and one felt straightaway “at home”.

Outside the carriages, as on all big stations in Holland, it was lively with people looking for seats, vendors of coffee with their trays and vendors of “broodjes (rolls) met kaas (cheese), worst (sliced sausage), etc.” with their three-wheeled glass cupboards.

Utrecht had already got rid of its town tramway system in 1938 and the only tram left was an interurban going to Zeist, running on standard gauge track from the Central Station in Utrecht, through the city streets. This was the Nederlandse Buurt Spoorweg (NBS). Outside the city it followed the main road. It went through the fortification ring and past the Royal Meteorological Institute (the KMI) at De Bilt. So as not to interfere with sensitive geological instruments it had to pick up and return its electricity by two overhead wires instead of the usual running to earth on the track.

Coming into Zeist this standard gauge track joined the 3’-6” gauge track of the same concern, but coming all the way from Arnhem as an electric interurban along the road. This dual gauge came to an end in the square in front of the Zeist railway station. The NBS had a big workshop here.

From Zeist tramway station, the narrower gauge continued on to Amersfoort, where it finished right near the railway station there. The narrower system of the NBS still had some goods traffic in car loads and to overcome the difference in gauges, it had goods wagons where the wheels could shift over the axle to the required width of the gauge. The NBS also used little standard gauge trolleys on which the narrow gauge goods wagons were lifted. The goods wagons running on those little trolleys made a big racket and often had hot boxes as well because the little wheels had to make excessive revolutions.

In Zeist I saw also a 0-4-0 tram loco which had been converted from steam to electricity. Its boiler was heated by an electric element to generate the steam.

This was a most interesting time in my life on which I look back with much nostalgia. Things were good and cheap. I had a guilder for pocket money each week which was a lot of money then.

As my father was due to go back to the Indies in June 1940, I went to live with an aunt in Wolvega, where I was going to board and go to high school in Heerenveen by bike each day (15 km each way).

My family was going to stay in a hotel in Oranjewoud prior to embarkation. This arrangement was going to start in the middle of May 1940. However on 10 May the war broke out for the Netherlands and prevented my family’s return to the Indies. With hindsight they were very lucky in a way.

After about a month, my father was put on “wachtgeld” (literally, waiting money) by the NIS and we moved to Hilversum to live. My father was going to study freight transport with the Netherlands Railways (NS) for which he got a free pass to travel all over the place.

I kept my eyes open for the railway and tramway scene, but not to the extent I would have liked to. One was considered a sticky beak, and in any case, one thought this scene would last forever, like everything else. How mistaken!

As soon as the five day war was finished, the German occupation began and road transport was finished, because of petrol rationing. Most tramway companies started to do up their remaining goods lines for passenger traffic again, steam locomotives were rescued from the scrap dealers and put into action again, and rail traffic became busier than ever. Many of the large bridges were blown up but repairs were quickly undertaken. Meanwhile ferries kept traffic moving.

Going to Frisia by train, between Zwolle and Meppel, one saw a tramline along a canal there, the Dedemsvaart. A few goods wagons were standing forlorn there as the traffic of the Dedemsvaartse Stoomtram Maatschappij (DSM) shifted to the road. The war changed all that. Soon this company was frantically trying to get steam locomotives on the track again. It wasn’t long then before one saw, especially on the Zwolle cattle market days, a very long steam tram with country people from as far away as eastern Groningen.

In 1939 the Netherlands Railways (NS) were mainly steam and only the busiest main lines were electrified, viz Alkmaar–Amsterdam–Utrecht–Eindhoven, Amsterdam–Haarlem–Den Haag–Rotterdam–Dordrecht (the “old” line) and Hook of Holland–Rotterdam/Den Haag–Utrecht–Arnhem. Arnhem–Nijmegen was just being opened, while Utrecht to Hilversum opened just in time during the war when the electrification came to a temporary halt for the duration of the war.

The railway bridge at Zwolle had just been strengthened and the beautiful 3900 class 4-6-0 engines could run from Amsterdam–Amersfoort to Zwolle. Beyond Zwolle the 3700 class took over and I even saw a streamlined version of this class, which soon reverted to their ordinary outlook as the streamlining interfered with the quick maintenance.

The winter ‘39/’40 was severe and at the onset of winter, the traffic on rail increased enormously as the canals and roads froze over and people and goods turned to rail transport. Because of the mobilisation there were a lot of military personnel on furlough and on the move.

Travel by rail (or road) in the summer of 1940 was hampered by most of the big bridges having been destroyed and one had to use ferries everywhere while the bridges were being rebuilt.

When we went on holiday from Hilversum to our family in Frisia, I had to go to Amsterdam and take a boat of the Koppe line to Lemmer (again “de” Lemmer in Frisian) as the bridge at Zwolle was blown up. It was an overnight boat service and at De Lemmer the NTM tram stood ready at the quay and took one via Joure–Heerenveen–Drachten to Groningen. This was to develop into a very busy artery during the war as an alternative to the railway, when trains became more and more overcrowded.

The NTM “boat tram” became longer and longer and very frequently was hauled by two locomotives with some nine passenger cars and a half dozen or so goods wagons and vans.

In Hilversum we had the head office of the Gooische Tramweg Maatschappij (GTM), which had some tramlines running through this area of the Netherlands and a line from this area to Amsterdam. The latter was already broken up just before the war broke out and replaced by buses.

The area, het Gooi, was mainly recreational, with lots of pine forest and heather country, inhabited by artists and commuters who travelled daily to Amsterdam. When the bus traffic was severely restricted once the Netherlands was occupied, the GTM pulled all their scrapped locos and carriages out of retirement and did them up again.

Their four IC motor wagons of a modern design with plenty of seating capacity and the two trailers had been sold to the NTM. The tracks in Het Gooi were rapidly brought up to standard again and steam trams ran from the station of Hilversum to Laren, Blaricum, Huizen and via Naarden to Bussum station. The commuter traffic between Huizen and Bussum became particularly heavy with the steam trams running into a dock platform at Bussum. The GTM had the normal standard gauge like the NTM. Because of its summer time traffic of vacationers the GTM had quite a lot of open carriages, which were closed in for ordinary traffic.

People seemed to travel more. Buses and private cars were no longer used, bikes and tyres became scarce too, and people had to travel frequently from the cities to the country to get something extra to eat, like butter, bacon or flour.

Passenger express trains for the military ran all over Europe along the mainlines. I still have a facsimile of the timetable when this was at its greatest extent, from Narvik (Norway) and Finland to the Spanish border and the toe of Italy, from the Atlantic coast, the Channel and North Sea coast deep into Russia and into the Balkans.

Passenger trains in 1942/‘43 were always very full and during special times like holidays or Christmas, second divisions were run.

The winter of ‘42 was particularly severe all over Europe. The train in which my father was returning from the NS head office in Utrecht, got stuck in a snow drift between Utrecht and Hilversum, and it was well into the night curfew before he arrived home, hungry and cold.

Still, rail transport discharged its duties marvellously during the war. No matter where one was — Great Britain, Europe, anywhere else in the world — the railways kept the wheels of transport and commerce turning as well as doing the defence jobs, and they were tremendous commitments. Big cities had to be fed, factories supplied with raw materials, soldiers and their gear transported over the length and breadth of Europe. And all that still to timetable and without any hitches. A terrific organisation it was, whether one looked in Great Britain, Europe, America or Australia.

The Dutch railways went on a national strike in September 1944 and came out of the war badly damaged. A big reconstruction program was started and at the same time the system was modernised and electrified. By 1958 no steam locos were left but for some in museums.

The big railway museum is in Utrecht in the Maliebaan station. It holds jubilee books of the former Dutch railway companies. These books hold the signatures of all their employees at the time. My Grandfather’s signature is in the book of the HIJSM (Hollansche IJzeren Spoorweg Maatschappij).

Early in the war there were some sabotage attempts, cutting of the railway telegraph wires along the line near Hilversum. The adult male population of the municipality of Hilversum was drafted in guard duties along the railway lines in the municipality. Open sabotage stopped immediately, and was subsequently carried out more covertly. For example, foreign matter was added in lubricating material, or trucks were wrongly ticketed. On the whole the railways and tramways didn’t need much supervising by Germans, and they carried on normally. This is in contrast with Eastern Europe, where all positions had to be supervised by German railway men.

I went to a youth Sports Camp in Germany in early 1943. We travelled as a group in an electric train from The Hague to Rotterdam Delftse Poort, which still showed bomb damage. It is now called Rotterdam Centraal. In Rotterdam, there was an old three-axle carriage reserved for our group and it was attached to a passenger train to Cologne. The rail traffic in the Ruhr area was very busy. At Cologne the carriage was shunted onto a local train to Daaden which is at the end of a branch line in the Westerwald.

We took a bit of a roundabout route that day as the previous night high water in the Eder near Kassel had interrupted the line. That was the night of the famous dambuster raid. Trains were (as usual) full but little delayed.

I was called up for the Labour Service (Ned.Arbeids Dienst — NAD) a fortnight or so after my trip to Germany. After a few weeks at Overloon–Smakt in Limburg, I joined a contingent that went to make up the 4th section of the fifth corps (the Oostkorps), which had its HQ in Bielsk, present day Poland. The area was then part of occupied Russia.

The assembly point was near Steenwijk (Prov. Overijsel), where we were loaded on a goods train. There were two carriages in the consist, a three-axle “dog box” for the officers, NCO’s and train guard and a three-axle coach with wooden seats for two along either side of an aisle. The other three groups went into closed goods vans, 40 to a van. There were also a few vans with gear. The consist was not enough for a goods train on its own, so we were forwarded as part of other goods trains.

The carriage had wooden seats for two on either side of the aisle, with a lavatory in the middle of the carriage. In daytime it was alright, when one sat up and looked out of the window. We had straw all over the floor, but to sleep there was no space to stretch out. In a goods van one had the whole floor space covered with straw (or palliasses) to sleep on or stretch out.

We had each a wooden box for our belongings and the fellows in the goods van had these boxes with them to sit on.

For cooked food, we relied upon kitchens which were staffed by women of the German Red Cross or other charitable organisations. These kitchens were at all big stations and marshalling yards where this type of trains stopped. It was mostly some soup made from bones and gruel, vegetables of the season thrown in and a thick slice of “kommies brot”, a wholesome and filling bread made from mostly rye. And always there was coffee, of the “ersatz” variety.

And so we travelled from Steenwijk, via Zwolle to Enschede and joined the important route via Hanover, the Berlin area to Bromberg (Polish — Bydgosz), Thorn (Torun), Warschau-West to Bialystok, where we went on to a single line to Bielsk and Bialowies (Polish — Bialowieza).

At Warschau-West there was a huge marshalling yard where we stood for two days among trains coming from all directions in Europe. These trains were ready to go either East or West, with soldiers, prisoners of war, recovery materials such as damaged tanks and planes, “Beute” (loot) and foodstuffs. I saw wagons from all over Europe here including one that was marked “Suomi” (Finland) with a stencil saying that it was prohibited to enter the Reich, because of its larger profile.

I saw very little civilian rail traffic in Poland. The few passenger trains I saw seemed to be short trains composed of very old four-wheel passenger cars, with people jam-packed in it and hanging everywhere outside it, standing on the steps.

Crossing the river Bug, between Praga and Bialystok, we came into territory that had been occupied by the Russians since October 1939 and from which they were driven out in June 1941. This route to Bialystok was also a major railway artery to the fronts at Leningrad and Moscow.

Bialowieza is a village in the centre of the Bialowieska Puszta. The Botanic Park or Castle Park is an area of approx. 50 ha. and was created in 1894 in the English style by Walery Kronenberg. There are circa 150 different trees and bushes. The palace of the Russian Czars is located in this park. In the puszta there were about 20 European bison, which were protected under the “patronage” of Herman Goering.

Every day, three groups of our section took a half hour train ride on the narrow gauge forest railway to a farm, where the drainage on the lands around the farm had to be improved. The little train was made up by a 0-8-0T of continental type, a carriage and some flatcars, all bogey rolling stock. The passenger car was a typical Russian type with longitudinal seats, small double-glazed windows, an open balcony at each end and inside a huge stove.

Each morning we were followed by some Polish workmen on a tiny trolley, which was being pushed along by a long pole by one or two of them. This mode went pretty fast too as our train went at a good speed and the “polers” managed to keep up with us.

In October ‘43 we went back to the Netherlands. This time the whole corps was together and we had a whole goods train to ourselves.

Each “transport” as it was called, had a “kommandant”, not necessarily the highest ranking officer. Each transport had a number that it carried from start to finish and was made known beforehand along its route. This number was known to a central office and determined also the priority of the transport.

The tenders of the locomotives in Germany all carried the slogan “Räder müssen rollen für den Sieg” in huge letters (and as a joke “und Kinderwagen für den nächsten Krieg”) — Wheels have to run for victory — prams have to run for the next war!!!

As the train had to pick up a section in Kleszcele and the corps HQ at Bielsk, we travelled back via a different route. The train went via Siedlce–Warsaw–Poznan–Cottbus–Magdeburg–Hanover–Osnabrück to Holland. Because it was one train we made it back in 3½ days and arrived late at night in Nunspeet (the depot of the NAD).

I never experienced any bombing or shooting while travelling during the war but my father did. Just when he was leaving the station restaurant after lunch in Nijmegen, bombs fell on this city and a blast blew him onto the tracks with a few splinters in his neck. Some people dragged him onto the platform and sheltered him in the pedestrian tunnel between the platforms.

I had moved into the metal industry and went into training at a state workshop where I had to make various parts of steam engines as proof of my ability. I came to work for the wagon-and bridge-factory of Werkspoor in Utrecht, a huge concern then, which is now closed. With the rationalisation of industries in a European community, all this work went to German firms.

At Werkspoor in Utrecht I worked on the repair of the electric trains that came back from Germany, goods wagons that were being built for the NS, huge hopper cars for the Argentine railways and a Swiss-type 3-axle tram for the tramways of Amsterdam. I really became immersed in this sort of work, attended all sorts of courses in metal work, and shifted to Rotterdam, where Werkspoor had a big project at the Shell refinery at Pernis.

I got a two year contract to work for the same firm on their project in Curacao (Neth. West Indies). The Shell refinery in Willemstad, Curacao (now closed) was the biggest oil plant around these parts. It used to have its own rail system but this was closed when I got there, although the rails were still in situ. Similarly the railways at La Guaira, the port for Caracas (Venezuela) were being phased out.

In Curacao I did courses in Engineering Inspection, and Railroad Car Repairs with the International Correspondence School. I don’t know whether it did me much good, but I think I learned to write and work in English and there is nothing that I don’t understand in the engineering game. I studied then the American type of rolling stock building, which now prevails here in Australia.

In the latter half of 1953 I migrated to Australia from Curacao. In Colon (Panama) and along the Panama Canal I saw a bit of the railway there, all American style.

In Noumea (New Caledonia) there was a huge mountain of scrapped railway track and rolling stock on the quayside next to the ship. In an open air night club “le Petit Train”, a locomotive and some carriages formed the buildings of this night club. These were then the last vestiges of the railways in French New Caledonia.

With this background, I came to Australia on November 13, 1953.