Train World
The Belgian Railway Museum
After Belgium became independent from the Netherlands in 1830, the Dutch closed their waterways to Antwerp & Ghent, cutting off the Belgian trade route to Prussia, and so the Belgians had to find a new way to transport their goods eastward. In 1834, King Leopold I enacted a law to build a national railway network that would stretch out to Prussia & France, and one year later the first train on the European mainland drove from Brussels to Mechelen. By 1843, when the network had grown to a length of 556 km, one could catch a train from Antwerp to Aachen, and in 1846 Brussels & Paris became the first two capitals to be connected by rail. Over time, the network continued to expand, and today Belgium ranks among the countries with the highest railway density.
Train World in Schaerbeek, i.e. Brussels, takes you on a journey through the history of the Belgian railways. Among the collection highlights are replicas of L’Eléphant, one of the English engines to pull the first trains in 1835, and Le Belge, the first locomotive ever built in Belgium, as well as the Pays de Waes, the oldest surviving Belgian locomotive, built in 1844. The museum’s most impressive steamers are the Pacific № 10.018, Europe’s most powerful engine at the time it was built in 1913, and the elegant Atlantic № 12.004, a streamlined locomotive introduced in 1939 to work lightweight express trains between Brussels and Ostend. The exhibition gives a fascinating overview of the way Belgium embraced the railway and how the network expanded over time, and how the national railway company SNCB has been operating the service.
www.trainworld.beReader Comments
Bregt
The first Belgian locomotives (La Flèche, L’Eléphant, Stephenson, La Rapide, and L’Eclair) were built in England according to a design by Robert Stephenson, who had previously built Locomotion № 1 (1825) and Rocket (1829). The sixth locomotive, Le Belge (1835), was built in Belgium by John Cockerill, whose company in Seraing, near Liège, became one of the country’s main producers of steam locomotives. Cockerill also built the Type 10 «Pacific» (1913) and Type 12 «Atlantic» (1939) engines that are now on display at the railway museum in Schaerbeek.
Annick
It took Holland nine years to accept Belgian independence. When the Treaty of London was signed in 1839, Belgium agreed to return the province of Limburg’s eastern part to the Dutch King Willem I, who was also the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, as compensation for losing the French-speaking part of his grand duchy to Belgium. Article 12 of the treaty entitled Belgium to build a road or a canal to Germany through eastern Limburg, but in the end they built a railway, the Iron Rhine, which opened in 1879. In 1914, Germany invaded Belgium, and the Dutch closed the Iron Rhine, invoking their neutrality. The Germans then built a new line, the Montzen Railway, that went around Dutch territory through occupied Belgium; this remained the preferred route between Belgium and Germany after the war, and in 1991 the Iron Rhine closed. In the late nineties the Belgians wanted to reactivate the line, but the Dutch refused, officially for environmental reasons, but essentially to protect the interests of the Port of Rotterdam, which had been the very reason for closing the waterways back in 1830.
Philippe
Off-topic: Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, the son-in-law of the British, Irish & Hanoverian King George IV, became the first King of the Belgians in 1831, after turning down the throne of Greece the year before. In the long run, it was a wise decision to govern the Belgians instead of the Greeks, because Greece became a republic in 1973 and the Belgian monarchy is still going strong. (Coming back to Train World: in the permanent exhibition there are two royal carriages to be admired.)