Rafters station Bels Lijntje

Are you going to ride the Bels Line? Then be sure to stop at Weelde Station, where two exact copies of rafters have been placed. These were part of the former border station and show how enormous the size originally was.

On October 1, 1867, the first trains crossed the railway line between Turnhout and Tilburg. Almost 40 years later on the Baarle-Grens/Weelde-Statie border a large international border station was opened with a station building of no less than 167 meters long. The national border Belgium/Netherlands cut this station building right in the middle. On the elevated island platform of over 370 metres long, passenger trains from and to the Netherlands on the west side and from and to Belgium on the east side arrived. The platform, which was once almost completely roofed over, is still visible today. In 2017, two enormous trusses were placed on both sides of the border. They are exact copies of the original trusses from the past. By repositioning these trusses, the railway history of the Bels Line is revived a little more.