On 20 July 2024, the light rail extension from Amstelveen to Uithoorn, south of Amsterdam, was opened with a modest celebration, with a few hours of free taster rides between the three new stops in Uithoorn. On Sunday 21 July, scheduled passenger services started on the extended line 25 between Zuid station in Amsterdam and Uithoorn Centrum.
To the south-west of Amsterdam lies the Haarlemmermeerpolder, an inland lake that was drained in 1852. A large agricultural area was created with a fairly extensive railway network (local lines) from the beginning of the twentieth century – with connections to Amsterdam, among other places, and via the villages to the ‘old country’, such as Aalsmeer and Uithoorn. The railways were not very successful in the then still sparsely populated area; passenger transport ended in 1950 and the equally modest freight transport ended in the 1970s. In the decades that followed, Aalsmeer and Uithoorn developed into satellite towns of Amsterdam; both have a population of approximately 30,000 today.
The old railway station in Amsterdam – Haarlemmermeerstation, a monumental building from 1915 – together with the northern section of the former railway to Bovenkerk, has been home to the Amsterdam Electric Museum Tram since 1975. Today, the line has been shortened for several years due to construction work on the crossing motorway A9.
In 1990 a combined tram/light rail line was built between Amsterdam and Amstelveen for tram line 5 to Amstelveen centre and light rail line 51 (part of the metro) to Amstelveen Poortwachter, further south. In 2004, an extension of line 51 from Poortwachter to Amstelveen Westwijk followed, partly via the old railway line.
In 2019 and 2020, this line was modernised and converted to low-floor operation, we reported here: https://www.urban-transport-magazine.com/en/the-new-amstelveenlijn-in-amsterdam/ . It became a tram line with the number 25. During this modernisation, a parking facility for 25 trams was built south of the Westwijk terminus.
In 2016, the decision had already been made to continue the line to Uithoorn. The old railway embankment could be used for this, but had to be adapted as the former railway line was only single-track. There are even some old buildings from the railway era along the route. The new line is almost 4 kilometres long and construction lasted from 2014 to 2023, followed by a very long test period from August 2023. The project cost 60 million euros, including the expansion of the aforementioned stabling facility.
Since 21 July, it has been possible to use the three stops in Uithoorn – Aan de Zoom, Station en Centrum – and travel to Amsterdam by rail again after almost 75 years. Unfortunately, this only goes as far as Zuid station; to continue to the city centre, you have to change to metro line 52 or tram line 5.
A journey between Uithoorn and Amsterdam Zuid takes about half an hour. The service is operated by CAF 15G low-floor coaches (five-car multi-articulated). The coaches on line 25 are painted silver-grey with black, the same coaches on the city network are white with blue. For the time being, solo carriages are being used because second carriages have derailed several times during test operations. Hopefully it will be possible to run with double traction from 1 September.
Incidentally, the line is officially called ‘Amstellijn’, but that has apparently been forgotten. Even the project organisation refers to it as the ‘Uithoornlijn’.
