Avoid Utrecht Central Station advises Dutch railway; Train problems from Amsterdam to Roosendaal

Large crowds piled up at Utrecht Centraal on Monday evening after a collision between a train and a person took place hours earlier. The incident took place at the train station on track 16, and prompted the evacuation of platforms 15 through 18. Making matters worse, a national outage at one of the country's largest telecom firms hindered the ability to get train service back on schedule.

"For safety reasons, you are advised to bypass Utrecht Centraal. Communication is also hindered by a nationwide telephone disruption at KPN," national Dutch railway NS said in a statement.

The accident took place just before 3:30 p.m. Minutes later, the telecommunications breakdown began. A Sprinter train between Amsterdam and Utrecht also broke down at about the same time complicating the issue even further, and train infrastructure firm ProRail said problems around Zwolle could make for a difficult evening rush hour.

Affected train routes included the routes between Utrecht and Amsterdam, Arnhem, Breukelen, and Den Bosch. A broken-down train also caused problems on the high-speed corridor between Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Breda, and a signal failure forced a halt to trains between Harlem and Alkmaar, and Haarlem and Zandvoort.

While many of those issues were likely to be fixed between 7:15 and 9 p.m., trains between Breda and Roosendaal were also scrapped because of a signal failure that was unlikely to be fixed before 2 a.m. on Tuesday.