Broken overhead line leaves night train from Amsterdam to Austria stranded
By Simone Jacobs
On the evening of July 29, a Nightjet travelling from Amsterdam to Innsbruck, Austria was stranded due to a broken overhead line between Arnhem and Nijmegen. 500 train passengers had to be evacuated by ProRail and NS.
Stranded Nightjet passengers evacuated to Utrecht
According to ProRail, all the travellers were safely evacuated to Utrecht by 10pm and given a voucher to book a hotel for the night. However, “Many hotels in the Utrecht area were full. Sixty travellers could not find a hotel,” said a ProRail spokesperson.
Around 20 passengers who were unable to get a hotel spent the night on a stationary train that was placed for them at Utrecht Central Station, keeping them covered and with heating overnight. The remaining 40 passengers travelled back to Amsterdam by public transport to find a hotel there.
Train traffic between Amsterdam and Innsbruck resumed
The Nightjet tickets for all stranded passengers were rebooked and the broken overhead line has since been repaired. Train traffic between the Netherlands and Austria resumed on July 30 at 7.30am.
Thumb image credit: silverfox999 / Shutterstock.com
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Editor for the Netherlands at IamExpat Media. Simone studied Genetics and Zoology at the University of Pretoria in South Africa before moving to the Netherlands, where she has been working as a writer and editor since 2022. One thing she loves more than creating content is consuming it, mainly by reading books by the dozen. Other than being a book dragon, she is also a nature lover and enjoys hiking and animal training. Read more