Amsterdam to the Rhein Ruhr area with the ICNG

The Dutch Railway, NS, has submitted a notice to the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) of its intention to run 6 daily services in both directions from Amsterdam Centraal to the Rhine-Ruhr region. This will be done in collaboration with Deutsche Bahn, DB, starting in the 2028 timetable.

Since the notice on 10 June 2026, a few articles have come out, and while I wanted to share this as a link post, my notes grew too large, so I thought it might be best served as a blog instead. So here we are.

Service

The final destination in Germany hasn’t been decided yet, other than that it will be in the Rhine-Ruhr region and that the service will go through Utrecht Centraal, Arnhem Centraal and Zevenaar Grens. NS and DB already run quite a few trains together to Berlin and Frankfurt.

The Amsterdam Centraal to Berlin Hbf service goes through Hilversum, Amersfoort Centraal, Bad Bentheim, Osnabrück Hbf and Hannover Hbf. This service uses the new ICE 3neo trains. This service was originally run with NS 1700-hauled carriages, which would switch locomotives at Bad Bentheim to run in Germany. The 1700’s were then replaced temporarily by Siemens Vectron locomotives that ran all the way through to Berlin. This service was supposed to be run by the ICE-L trains, but the delivery from Talgo is delayed and so today they use the 3neos.

The Amsterdam Centraal to Frankfurt Hbf services go through Utrecht Centraal, Arnhem Centraal, Emmerich, Emmerich, Oberhausen Hbf, Duisburg Hbf, and Düsseldorf Hbf, Köln Hbf and Siegburg/Bonn and Frankfurt Flughafen Fernb. Like the Berlin train, this service also uses the new ICE 3neo; here, these new trains replaced the ICE 3M, which was given a proper send-off in April 2025

An NS spokesperson has told NL Times that the new service does not intend to replace the trains to Köln but will be in addition to them. NL Times also reports that the service will initially start with “three trips per day in both directions and expand this to six.”

Within the notice, NS has provided a potential timetable for the Dutch part of the route. The trains would depart throughout the day, two hours apart from each other, in both directions.

Rolling stock

NS had indicated in the notice to ACM that they intend to use the new eight-part Intercity Nieuwe Generatie (ICNG) trains on the service. The NS ICNG trains were first ordered in 2019 to operate on routes within the Netherlands, replacing the Intercity carriages pulled by TRAXX locomotives used on the high-speed line and the intercity routes served by the ageing ICM fleet. They first rode with passengers in 2023. These trains are based on the Alstom Coradia Stream platform and can travel up to 200 km/h. Since then, NS has purchased additional sets capable of travelling to Belgium (ICNG-B), which began service on 15 December 2024.

In 2019, two eight-part ICNG (ICNG-D) trains capable of travelling to Germany were ordered, which were delivered in 2023. They have, since then, gone through acceptance tests in Germany and arrived in the Netherlands for tests and training in 2025. Before the first two German-capable ICNG trains arrived in the Netherlands, NS purchased 10 more, bringing the total of ICNG-D trains to 12.

Calendars have been set, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the service details shape up as the months go by.