European Railroad Discussion > Netherlands: Farewell to the 1700 Series locomotives

The last of the 'classic' Dutch style locomotives, the 1700 series, will be retired with the timetable change in December. To celebrate this, Nederlandse Spoorwegen (Netherlands National Railway) ran a special charter train around the Netherlands. These locomotives last ran exclusively on the Amsterdam to Berlin trains and are replaced in Bad Bentheim with a German Class 101 locomotive from the trip to Bad Bentheim to Berlin. Starting this week they will mostly be replaced with modern Siemens Vectron locomotives pulling the Deutsche Bahn InterCity 1 coaches.

In addition to the special train running around the Netherlands, there was a display in Rotterdam with other 1600 and 1700 series locomotives which now have private owners.

The first photo is the special train with an old VIRM Inter City train next to it.
Second is the special train arriving in Rotterdam across from the display locomotives.
Third photo is 3 more locomotives from NS on display.

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Neat. I appreciate the coverage. The Genesee and Wyoming paint scheme is truly everywhere!

When were these built?  I know they were around in the early '90's and don't think they were exactly new then.
Gordon

gbmott Wrote:
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> When were these built?  I know they were around
> in the early '90's and don't think they were
> exactly new then.
> Gordon

The similar French SNCF 7200 series locomotives were built from 1976 to 1985.

Ray

The NS 1700 series locomotives were built in 1994 by GEC Alsthom and are the last of this design.

 

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Thanks for the update.  Will the locomotive change at Bad Bentheim be eliminated with the new Vectrons
running through from Amsterdam to Berlin?  Photo from the RailColorNews site.

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My two encounters at Maastricht in May 2015 and February 2013.

...John Reay
Springhill, Nova Scotia, Canada

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milepost20 Wrote:
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> Thanks for the update.  Will the locomotive
> change at Bad Bentheim be eliminated with the new
> Vectrons
> running through from Amsterdam to Berlin?

In the next timetable the NS Vectron will run all the way through to Berlin. And the station stop in Bad Bentheim has been changed from 14 minutes to 3 minutes because there will no longer a need to change the locomotive. Railroad enthusiasts will not be the only people disappointed with this change. Smokers use this 14 minute pause as a smoking break also.

Thanks for this post and the nice images, albeit concerning the sad news on the retirement of the 1700s. They were interesting and attractive locomotives, like their French cousins the SNCF BB 7200 class, and it's sad to see them go. Particularly to be replaced by Siemens Vectrons, one of the least attractive (downright ugly in my book) designs out there today.

One more classic from the past bites the dust. The march of time is bitter sometimes, isn't it?

MC



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/23 13:19 by ironmtn.