From monsters to nanoseconds: how an 8-year-old saved NS's image
It's Wednesday afternoon at Groningen's main station. The rain is just holding off, but the atmosphere is no less lively. A small group of travellers stop in their tracks, pointing and grinning. There, on platform 4a, it stands: the monster train. A real beauty, but one with teeth, eyes, and some serious claws curling around its sides. It's the brainchild of 8-year-old Phileine, who's standing next to it, absolutely glowing. And honestly? This is the best thing to happen to NS in a long time.
We all know the feeling. That moment when you're stuck on another delayed intercity, you spill coffee on your trousers, and you swear you're going to write a strongly worded letter to NS Reizigers B.V. NS's image? It hasn't exactly had a fresh coat of paint in recent years. Then along comes Phileine. She didn't draw up another report on punctuality; she drew up a train full of monsters. And today, that train made its official debut. Not some stiff PR stunt, but a genuine reason to smile.
I was there when she got off. The smile on her face was wider than the nose of the Honda NSX I saw tearing down the Autobahn years ago. Only this was a quiet kind of joy. Her design stood out among the many entries, a conductor told me. 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 exactly on time. Down to the nanosecond it rolled into the station. It was as if time itself decided to play along for an 8-year-old.
I overheard a father saying to his son, "Look, that's the one!" 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, did an nslookup on the soul of NS. She was searching for where the fun and imagination had gone, and she found them again in her own monster doodles.
What makes this so special? Let me tell you:
- The timing was perfect: Right when the debate about schedules and fines was heating up again, this initiative came along. Not a press release, but a real 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 routine: Travel is often just from A to B, head down, earbuds in. Today, people looked up. They pointed. They laughed.
And those details on the train... I saw a monster holding onto a platform post like it was a lollipop. Another had wheels with eyes that seemed to watch you the whole ride. It's almost a shame this train isn't a regular sight 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 small 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 single night. Some were scary, others just a bit quirky. And it was exactly that combination that stood out. It's that sense of uninhibited creativity. Something we adults sometimes scroll past 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 while. It was about a child who, with a marker and paper, held up a mirror to a state-owned company. And that mirror was full of monsters that were actually quite endearing. If you ask me, we need more of that. Maybe they should do that nslookup more often at NS: searching for that spark of magic that still exists. Today, they found it in a monster train.