u/HighburyAndIslington

NS (Dutch Railways) have finally seen the light and decided to add line numbers to their railway network, starting at the end of this year. I tried my hand at making a map that displays those numbers (as communicated by NS they're only provisional and to be finalized later this year).

The map itself is a regular 45/90 degree design, but I tilted the lines 22.5 degrees, which allowed me to straighten out some important corridors without skewing the diagram too much from the true geography. Also, the Netherlands appear a bit tilted to the right on a usual map layout, so this angle corresponds better to the country's real layout. But it remains a diagram, of course, so other parts don't correspond to their true layout that well (if I would have wanted to create a map that adheres to the true geography, I would have created a geographically accurate map).

I decided to bundle individual lines by logical corridors, starting from NS's intercity (IC) lines, which could be considered the backbone of the network. These are rendered as thick lines on the map. The thinner lines are sprinter (local) lines; wherever these run parallel for a significant portion to IC lines, I gave them the same colour. All NS lines are rendered in vibrant colors; the lines of other train operators are more muted. Line thicknesses correspond to sneltrein (express, thick) and stoptrein (local, thin) services.

Line numbers are shown at each terminal station, but I've added them on top of the lines at strategic positions (major stations, branches) as well to make them easier to follow. I purposely didn't add the IC and S prefixes NS is intending to use - apart from the line thickness, IC lines are planned to be numbered between 1 and 40, whereas S lines will get a number from 41 to (I reckon) 99, so there shouldn't be any overlap. Line numbers already in use by other train operators did get a prefix, as the same number might sometimes be used for parallel running local (RS) and express (RE) services.