The occasional freight train clanks over a new bridge over the main railway line to Antwerp at the northern end of the Netherlands’ largest rail yard, at Kijfhoek near Rotterdam, before entering a tunnel that leads to Germany.
The trains are among the first commercial services on the Betuwe Route, a 160km-long freight route that is intended to transform the ability of the Port of Rotterdam, the world’s third-busiest port and Europe’s busiest recipient of Asian trade, to handle onward movements by rail.
