Utrecht Central Station

The police will hinder train travelers at Utrecht Central Station during rush hour on Monday morning as part of their labor actions for a better collective bargaining agreement. Police officers will form a line at the station and passengers will only be able to enter through gaps in the line, ANP reports.

This action will happen between 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. Travelers should take delays into account, according to the police unions. According to the municipality of Utrecht, agreements were made with the police unions and the municipality expects no hindrance to the public.

The entrance gates at Utrecht Central Stations will be locked from Monday morning. From now on, people can only access the platforms at the station by checking in with their public transit card. Utrecht Central Station is the 71st station in the Netherlands on which this measure is implemented, NOS reports.

A couple from Vught found a plastic bag full of letters dating from World War II at Utrecht Central Station on Monday. Rens and Maartje Zonnenberg would like to find the owner of the letters and posted a call for information on Facebook.

According to Rens, the letters are dated between 1942 and 1944. They are written in Dutch, but the old handwriting make them difficult to read, he said to newspaper AD. The bag was found on a bench on platform 18. "There are more than 100, 150 maybe", he said. 

A 14-year-old girl was threatened, stabbed, assaulted and humiliated near Utrecht Central Station in January. Two other girls, aged 15 and 17 years from Deleen and Utrecht, appeared in court for the first time on Tuesday as the suspected perpetrators of this abuse, AD reports.

An American fast food invasion seems poised for the Netherlands this year. A record number of five new-to-the-Netherlands  American food chains will be opening in the country  in 2017, according to Metro Nieuws.

KPN completed its Long Range Wide Area-network for the Internet Of Things, making the Netherlands the first country in the world to have a so-called Lora-network with nationwide coverage

Only a very limited amount of train traffic will be possible from and to Utrecht Central Station on Monday morning. The construction works on the tracks around the station over the weekend took longer than expected and will continue into Monday morning, both NS and ProRail announced.

Due to "multiple faults" the train traffic between Utrecht Central and Driebergen-Zeist, Houten, Leidsche Rijn and Utrecht Zuilen has come to a complete standstill. The disruption started around 11:15 a.m. NS initially stated that the problem should be cleared up around 2:00 p.m. but has since retracted that statement. "It is not yet known how long this will last", can now be read on the rail company's website.

The majority of the Tweede Kamer, lower house of parliament, wants NS to put higher gates at Rotterdam Central Station and Amsterdam Central Station.

The faulty overhead connection cables that paralyzed train traffic to and from Utrecht central station Monday morning is expected to be fixed by 5.30 p.m. "Possibly your experience will be uncomfortable," the NS said in an update on train service.

Utrecht Centraal lost all train traffic for the second time in two weeks due to a major system failure and travelers' association Rover has demanded that ProRail makes some changes.