From monster drawings to nanoseconds: how an 8-year-old saved the NS’s reputation

It’s Wednesday afternoon at Groningen’s main station. The rain is threatening, but that hasn’t dampened the mood. A small group of travellers stop in their tracks, pointing and grinning. There, on platform 4a, it sits: the monster train. A real beauty, if that beauty had teeth, eyes, and a set of sizeable claws curling along its side. It’s the brainchild of eight-year-old Phileine, who’s standing next to it, absolutely glowing. And honestly? This is the best thing to happen to NS in ages.

We all know the feeling. You’re stuck on a delayed intercity, spill coffee down your trousers, and swear you’re going to write a sternly worded letter to NS Reizigers B.V. The NS’s reputation? Let’s just say it hasn’t exactly been given a fresh coat of paint in recent years. But then along comes Phileine. She didn’t draft yet another report on punctuality; she drew a train full of monsters. And today, that train made its official debut. It wasn’t a stuffy PR stunt. It was a genuine smile.

I was there when she stepped off. The grin on her face was wider than the nose of the Honda NSX I once saw tearing down the Autobahn. Only this was quiet, pure delight. Her design stood out from the pile of other entries, a conductor told me. And you know the best bit? While the rest of the country was having a whinge about delays of a few minutes, this train was precisely on time. Down to the nanosecond it rolled into the station. As if time itself decided to play along for an eight-year-old.

I heard a father say to his little boy: “Look, there it is!” and it made me think of that old computer term, nslookup. Back when the internet still felt like an adventure, you’d use that command to see where a website was really coming from. It felt like Phileine, with her drawings, did an nslookup on the soul of NS. She searched for where the fun and imagination had gone, and found them again in her own monster scribbles.

So, what makes this so special? Let me tell you:

• The timing was perfect: Just as debates about schedules and fines were flaring up again, along comes this initiative. Not a press release, but a proper monster on wheels.
• It belongs to all of us: This train wasn’t dreamt up by a marketing agency in Amsterdam, but by a girl from Zutphen. That’s what makes it authentic.
• It breaks the monotony: Travel is often from A to B, head down, earbuds in. Today, people were looking up. Pointing. Laughing.

And the details on that train… I spotted a monster clutching a platform pole like it was a lollipop. Another had wheels with eyes that watched you the whole journey. It’s almost a shame this train isn’t a regular fixture on international routes. Just imagine: NS International to Berlin, but with a grinning dragon on the side. Now that would be a conversation starter.

Phileine walked along the carriages with her dad. She had a little backpack on and looked like she’d just come back from a trip around the world. Her father told me she’d been working on the drawings for months. A new monster every night. Some were scary, others just a bit silly. And that mix was exactly what stood out. It’s that unselfconsciousness. Something we adults often scroll past a little too quickly.

So yes, NS still has a long way to go with punctuality and customer service. But today, at Groningen’s main station, it wasn’t about the numbers for a moment. It was about a kid with markers and paper, holding up a mirror to a national rail operator. And that mirror was full of monsters that were actually rather endearing. If you ask me, we could do with more of that. Maybe they should run that nslookup more often at NS: searching for that spark of magic that’s still there. Today, they found it in a monster train.