From monsters to nanoseconds: how an 8-year-old saved the NS’s image

It’s Wednesday afternoon at Groningen’s main station. The rain is holding off, but the atmosphere is no less vibrant. A small group of travellers stop in their tracks, pointing and grinning. There, on platform 4a, it stands: the monster train. A beauty of a thing, but one with teeth, eyes, and a couple of hefty claws curling along its side. It’s the brainchild of 8-year-old Phileine, who’s standing next to it, absolutely glowing. And to be honest? This is the best thing to happen to NS in a long time.

We all know the feeling. That moment you’re standing in a delayed intercity, spill coffee on your trousers, and vow to write a scathing letter to NS Reizigers B.V. The image of the NS? It hasn’t exactly been spruced up with a fresh coat of paint in recent years. But then along comes Phileine. She didn’t draft yet another report on punctuality; instead, she sketched a train full of spooky creatures. And today, that train made its first official run. Not some stiff PR stunt, but a genuinely heartwarming smile.

I was there when she stepped off. The grin on her face was wider than the nose on the Honda NSX I once saw tearing down the Autobahn years ago. Only this is a quiet kind of joy. A conductor told me her design stood out from a pile of others. And you know what the best part is? While the rest of the country was grumbling 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 8-year-old.

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

What makes this so special? Let me tell you:

• The timing was perfect: Right as the debate over schedules and fines was heating up again, this initiative came along. Not a press release, but a real-life monster on wheels.
• It belongs to all of us: The train wasn’t dreamed up by a marketing agency in Amsterdam, but by a little girl from Zutphen. That’s what makes it authentic.
• It breaks the monotony: Travel is often just A to B, head down, earphones in. Today, people looked up. They pointed. They laughed.

And then those details on the train... I spotted a monster holding onto a platform pole like it was a lollipop. Another had wheels with eyes that seemed to watch 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 father. She had a little backpack on and looked like she’d just returned from a world tour. Her father mentioned she’d been working on the drawings for months. Every evening, a new monster. Some were scary, others just a little bit quirky. And it was precisely that combination that stood out. It’s that unbridled innocence. Something we adults often skim over far 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 child with markers and paper holding up a mirror to a state-owned company. And that mirror was full of spooky creatures that were actually quite endearing. If you ask me, we need more of it. 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.