NBDS Railway

At the end of the 19th century Gennep was a booming railroad town. It was here that the head office, the frontier station and the railway workshops of the privately owned NBDS, the Noord Brabantsch Duitsche Spoorwegmaatschappij, were established. Gennep Station was one of the largest frontier stations in the Netherlands.
In those days the NBDS section Boxtel-Gennep-Wesel was part of the fastest connection between London, Berlin and St. Petersburg crossing the Maas and the Rhine. It was in Gennep that European royalty such as the Kaiser of Germany and the Tsar of Russia made a stop when on family visits. On one of the photos Queen Wilhelmina and Prince Hendrik can be seen with Gennep Station in the background. Mail traffic between Great Britain and the USA with Northern and Eastern Europe also went via the NBDS Railway Line.
The NBDS Line was not only part of the shortest connection between London and St Petersburg, but it also owned the “Blauwe Brabander” (Blue Brabander) which was the high-speed train of those days.
The 1st World War marked the end of the NBDS. However the railway line was yet to play a role twice in world history: on the 10th May 1940 during the Nazi-German invasion and again in February 1945 when the allied forces invaded Germany. During the battle of the Lower Rhine the station in Gennep was destroyed and the railway line ceased to exist.

The Loc 094 locomotive in Gennep is reminiscent of Gennep’s railroad town past. More information about the NBDS Railway Line can be found via the films, photos, route descriptions and other references on this website. A visit to the Martinus Tower Visitor’s Centre and museum het Petershuis will also tell you more. In museum het Petershuis there is a model of Gennep Station and a scale model of the famous locomotive “The Blauwe Brabander”. The latter is also to be seen in the Railroad Museum in Utrecht.
It is possible to download 2 routes with the NBDS Railway Line as theme: “The Armoured Train Route” and “The Tsar and Kaiser Route”. Two films will give you an impression of these routes.