The university town is almost abandoned, thanks to the Christmas holidays, and we wander the cobbled streets quite undisturbed.
It’s a warm day in the university town of Utrecht in the Netherlands. At least that is what the guide tells us.
We try to believe her despite the slanting rain and the wind that seems to be in serious search of our bones.
Our guide is Dutch but spends her free time making and teaching others how to make hot Indian curries, learned from her “Indian from Bihar husband”. Maybe that’s what keeps her warm, but we have been on a pasta and bread diet for the past few days,
and the warmth we brought along seems to have vanished quietly.
The university town is almost abandoned, thanks to the Christmas holidays, and we wander the cobbled streets quite undisturbed.
We crunch through gravel as we pass a pretty (very cold) park, and find ourselves facing a rather impressive building.
It is, we are told, a museum… for trains.
The Dutch Railway Museum was once a real railway station in the 19th century, and was renovated in the 20th century. We buy our tickets (14.50 Euros each) in a lavish hall, decorated with oil paintings and chandeliers. We take a quick look around and see the opulence of the Royal Waiting Room (cordoned off except for the lucky few like us), where royal travellers met visitors or stopped for a refreshing cuppa. All velvet and gold leaf, the waiting room would make a great place to curl up in against the weather outside.
The toilets are also old world, I am told, and some of us are curious enough to take a look, but I am fascinated by the holograms that are on display, in the wooden luggage racks that exhibit some of the old luggage that was used in the centuries past. The holograms depict train journeys, and fairy tales and indeed make luggage more magical than it is nowadays.
I am balanced on the top rung of an iron stop ladder peering at the moving image of a swan gliding towards a boy standing at the edge of a virtual lake, when I am summoned to visit the Museum itself.
We cross the tracks that are operational at peak times to bring special visitors to events at the Rail Museum, and enter the Museum workshop.
The large hall has a very ‘industrial’ roof, and the raised platforms hold carriages and trains from down the ages, and indeed the wooden seats, and gilt lamps speak of a luxury that only the first class aspires to in air travel today. What a way to watch the countryside roll past!
We climb into a mail car and see mail being sorted.
The workshop also has a simulator where boys, at the age when they want to grow up and become engine drivers, can feel the thrill first-hand.There is much to see and do. The shunting yard is rustic and inviting, but as we cannot wait for the demo, we choose
a ride instead.
There are many, including the Dream Journeys that invoke the Orient Express and other mystical trains, and the Great Discovery that traces the history of Dutch railways.
We opt for the Steel Monster ride, and find ourselves meeting historic figures who worked for the railways, and ‘narrowly miss’ Bergkoningin, a mammoth steam engine blocking our path.
We cross other steel monsters, including Loco 6300 the biggest loco the Dutch Railway ever had, fondly called the Brute, because it needed so much coal to run it that the fireman would end the day quite exhausted!
It’s fun and sometimes hair raising, as the car rushes through blue-grey morning mist to meet a dea end lit by an oncoming engine, then drops down many metres to avoid the collision…
And I am happy that it is also programmed for thrills and no spills!
The rail attic had models of every train imaginable, and for those who really want more, the reference library is large and includes timetables, Baedekar guides and 16,000 volumes… but this is open by appointment only!
Utrecht is the perfect setting for the Dutch Rail Museum, as it
is the headquarters of Eurail, the organisation that helps
travellers from outside Europe to make the most of seeing the
continent by train!
The rain continues to follow us to the train station to journey back to Amsterdam, but none of us seem to notice.
The sound of the pitter-patter has been replaced by the chug-chug of the locomotives, as we continue our walk, still lost in the past.
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