Thalys finally up to speed.
 

From 13 December 2009 the Thalys will finally be travelling at high speed through the Netherlands. It will travel at 160km/h between Amsterdam, Schiphol and Rotterdam, and from Rotterdam onwards it will travel at 300km/h. this means the travel time from Paris to Amsterdam will be cut by 51 minutes to 3 hours 18 minutes.
By the end of 2010 there will be 10 trains a day, and they will travel the entire line at 300km/h making the trip only 3 hours 13 minutes.

hetismij: First of thanks for that invaluable information for consideration in our future travels in Europe.
Please may I ask you a more personal question?
Does your Fodorite name mean "Have you got me"? or "You have got me"? or neither?

got me - Q - do you have any insights on the domestic Dutch trains - will the so-called Sprinters or whatever be put into service on the new high-speed line, speeding up travel times to say Antwerp? Apart from the Thalys that is

anyway Dunk u very wel for this update - and it's about time, right - tracks have been done for years it seems. Holland enters the high-speed railway countries.

I'm glad the travel time is coming down. I made a day trip to Amsterdam from Paris by Thalys last year, and the train time would have been a bit much for most people. (But I love trains, so I didn't mind!)

Hetismij means it's me.

Sprinters won't use the HSL, nor will Intercities. The new Fyra does. I have no idea if they intend to extend that beyond Rotterdam to Antwerp though. You have to pay extra to use the Fyra. Thalys stops in Antwerp and will only take 1hr 12 mins in December. You can get Thalys tickets to Antwerp for €19 at the mo.
Thalys will no longer stop in Den Haag from December 13th.

What do the people in the Hague think of that? Outraged? Indifferent?

Indifferent, they can get a train to Rotterdam and pick it up there. Still quicker than now.

thalys don't stop in Den Hague because the new high-speed line don't go via Hague any more, but i think goes straight up from Rotterdam to Schiphol, joining the old HS mainline just before the airport.

Correct Pal. Did you know it has code share agreements with some airlines btw?

Thumbs up for Thalys. 3 hours 18 min Paris to Amsterdam...that's fantastic. I prefer to fly out of AMS or BRU instead of CDG but in the past it's always felt too far of a commute. Now it seems possible!

Living in Th Hague myself, I will miss the opportunity to get a direct Thalys from my home town tot Paris. But trains run regularly between The Hague and Rotterdam and only take about 15 min., so in the end even for people in The Hague the new Thalys will be quicker indeed.

There still is some discussion between Dutch and Belgium railcompany's, wheter or not there will be a direct conenction The Hague-Brussels in the future. The Dutch say thet this is agreed upon, the Belgiums say it is too costly...
So we will wait and see about this!

3h14 from Paris to Cologne, which is the other Thalys destination that people tend to forget...

Tommie - original plans i believe allowed for a few daily Paris - Den Hague Thalys trains but unless this is a future development after the launch of the new high-speed line perhaps it has been shelved. You would think that with Den Hague being the workaday capital of one of the richest countries in the world it would have some direct Thalys service.

wonderful. I have taken the trip 2 times. Less time on the train and more time in Paris or Amsterdam works for me :)

The plans for Thalys to Den Haag and to Breda hit a problem due to the Belgian government apparently. They are refusing to meet their side of a contract signed in 2005. The Dutch government are now threatening a claim of €200 million if the Belgians don't meet their side of the deal. It all stems from the Belgians making their bit of the HSL too slow or something - so it takes 17 minutes longer to reach Brussels than was originally agreed. I can't say I understand all the ins and out of it.

This all follows on from the argument about the deepening of the Westerschelde so that larger ships can reach the port of Antwerp.
Relations between the neighbours are decidedly strained at the moment.

Meanwhile NS is working on making the HSL quieter for those living near it. The trains sound like a lorry dumping gravel for a couple of minutes apparently, and unsurprisingly the people living near the tracks are not happy. The Thalys trains are supposed to be a bit quieter than those currently testing the tracks.

Yesterday our parliament spoke about the question of the refusal of the Belgians to buy a high-speed train and put this on the line Brussels-Antwerp-Breda-The Hague.
This was part of a contract signed between the two countries in 2005 as 'hetismij' also states.

Hopefully both governments can put their differences aside, buy a train a let it ride from The Hague to Brussels.

Plans for a direct train form The Hague tot Paris have been shelved unfortunatley.....

@ Tommie & hetismij
The refusal of the Belgians for a direct high-speed line Brussels-The Hague is not the consequence of 'the argument about the deepening of the Westerschelde'. In fact it's the other way round! The Dutch have asked compensation to agree with the deepening of the Westerschelde. One of these compensations was the high-speed connection Brussels-The Hague.
Or how announcements in the press may vary from country to country ... even when these countries are each-others neighbours.

@MyriamC

Re-reading the posts of 'hetismij' and myself, we both do not say that the connection Brussels-The Hague is due to the Westerschelde-conflict (although the words from hetismij can be interpreted like that, I agree).

As far as I know (and this also stated by hetismij), was the agreement to buy a train for the Brussels-The Hague line, part of an agreement in 2005, because the NMBS (Belgian railway) had miscalculated the time it takes a train from A'dam to Brussels.

The Westerschelde-dispute is (as far as I know) not directly connected with this dispute, but because the Belgians were angry with the Dutch because they didn't meet their end of the bargain regarding the Westerschelde, the Dutch are now equally angry with the Belgians regarding the HSL......

But you are right, press in both countries probably write a more one-sided-story! Let's try and keep each other informed here at Fodors!

Thank you for clarifying that Tommie. Yes I only meant that what with the HSL argument and the Westerschelde argument relations are strained at the moment.

sounds completely ridiculous to an outsider, on both fronts