At a small station

Francois and Mieke (photo above) came to live in Thailand in January 2017. They want to build their little paradise in Nong Lom (Lampang). Thailandblog regularly publishes writings from both about life in Thailand.  

At a small station

Den Haag Staatsspoor, that was what a station should look like. A sturdy cast iron roof construction in heavy arches. A hall with real people behind counters and a man with a cap at the entrance of each platform, who cuts a hole in your platform ticket with a firm movement. And of course the trains are already waiting for their passengers. As a child I sometimes went there to watch trains, while my parents thought I was playing in the Rodeleeuwstraat.

We lived in The Hague and my parents' family lived for the most part in Utrecht. We didn't have a car, so we went to Staatsspoor a few times a year to take the train there. Because it was a terminal station, it was always ready when we arrived. So for me that was very natural. In Utrecht they apparently didn't know very well how to arrange that at such a station, because there you sometimes had to wait fifteen minutes before the train arrived.

The Hague State Railway

When Staatsspoor was demolished to make way for the concrete colossus Central Station, The Hague no longer had a real station in my childhood eyes. It wasn't until much later, after I had left the city for a long time, that I once stranded on Hollands Spoor and was able to determine that it was, and still is, a beautiful building. With the construction of Central, that unique situation in the Netherlands that you had to take the tram to another station for a transfer also disappeared; something that The Hague had in common with cities like Paris and London. From then on, the train from Rotterdam to Amsterdam made the sharp turn from Hollands Spoor to Staats, ehhh, to Centraal.

Luik

Stations have always fascinated me. The beautiful old buildings of Haarlem, Groningen and, as already mentioned, Hollands Spoor. But also the new construction of, for example, Liège. My move to Maashees has changed my station preference considerably. Vierlingsbeek station became my favourite. A meadow, a railway line, and a platform. In the morning you can see the sun rise and hear the birds chirping. No rush, no crowds, no shopping. Just a station as it should be: a place to catch the train.
Vierlingsbeek

Traveling through Scotland, I discovered that there are even more beautiful stations than Vierlingsbeek. Roger is one of those. Right next to the station are some old train carriages that serve as a guesthouse. A train stops in Rogart 8 times a day, that is, if a passenger has indicated that he wants to get off in that place, or if the driver sees someone waiting on the platform. The manageress of the guesthouse said that she recently saw one of her guests waiting on the wrong platform. With wild arm swings she managed to persuade the driver to stop. The train was then already a few hundred meters outside the station, but came back neatly to pick up the passenger. Unthinkable in the Netherlands. Although… the timetable is operated by NS subsidiary Abellio, better known in the Netherlands for fraud in the Maaslijn tender than for the service.

Station Hang Chat

Recently I live again at a most beautiful station in the world. Hang Chat Station (pictured), on the line from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, surpasses anything I've ever seen in stations. A beautiful station building, with koi carp in the pond. Excellent signposting to the parking lot, ticket sales (take off your shoes please), work areas for the station master and assistant station master, with original cast iron handles to operate the points, and of course also fully staffed.

The number of trains per day: 2. A large board indicates the arrival and departure times. Train 408 to Nakhon Sawan, from where you can continue to Bangkok, enters platform 11 at 47:1 AM and departs at 11:48 AM. At 12:45 pm train 407 arrives, also on track 1, to continue to Chiang Mai a minute later. Train traffic for the whole day is handled in 59 minutes. No rush, no crowds, no shopping. Just a station where you go to enjoy.