By far the largest part of the HSL line is combined with already existing infrastructure, or runs underground through a tunnel. Only for a relatively small part of its route does the track cut through the landscape by itself. Were the separate line re-joins a corridor of other infrastructure, there is sometimes a ‘leftover corner’, or overhoek, created. These are often triangular parcels, less than ideal for agricultural use or commercial building plots. Sometimes these leftover spaces serve as spoils depots, where surplus earth from construction work for the HSL can be stored. These sites have been assigned the status of ‘transitional zones’ and are expected to contribute to the high-speed line fitting smoothly into the landscape. As a result, they can provide added value for the areas around them.

In 2003 Atelier HSL organised an open competition for a number of ‘leftover places’ along the route of the HSL-South. Le Fèvre’s project lies at the point where the Schiphol line branches off in the community of Haarlemmermeer, Overhoek 207/HSL/Schiphol line. The rising height of the track bed largely blocks out a view of the spoils depot. However, there is a good view of the site from both the HSL trains as well as normal trains.
The architect’s proposal was to plant rows of trees in this triangle, running at right angles to the HSL line. The grid produces two effects: an accelerating (or decelerating) effect resulting from the diminishing (or increasing) distance between the rows of trees, and a turning effect created by the changing angle at which the rows are seen.

In Breda, railway tracks have always separated the neighbourhood of Prinsenbeek from the rest of the city. The construction of the HSL-South line has only made this infrastructural barrier bigger. In order to neutralise the effects of this immense traffic artery, the old park of Prinsenbeek was transformed into a new city park, Overbos, by landscape architects Juurlink & Geluk. Two new bridges over the HSL tracks were integrated in the design. The city park, laid out in landscape style, forms a pleasant contrast with the dynamism of the cars and trains that flash by, recessed at the bottom of a bank, where the traffic is partly hidden and partly presented as the ultimate spectacle.
The design resulted in a unique city park in which contrasting elements such as urbanity and rusticity, serenity and speed, the small gesture versus the monumental and the traditional versus the contemporary are bound up with one another in an organic manner.Gert Robijns’s artwork High Speed in Slow Motion makes the park’s users aware of the relationship of nature with the adjoining HSL infrastructure and other aspects connected to it, such as time, technology, speed and mobility. It stimulates the viewer to stop and look, to take a time out and reflect on the aspect of time, on our ‘mobile’ lives and on our fast paced lives.

The project shows two parallel worlds: the high speed reality of the HSL and the slow motion variant of a model train that departs and reaches its destination simultaneously with the HSL train. At a certain moment the visitor will see both trains: High Speed in Slow Motion. A string of LED lamps that light up successively will help visualise the route from Amsterdam to Breda, so that the visitor can literally see the HSL train approaching. Special vents simulate the displacement of air created by trains, and public announcements of domestic and international trains are replayed softly.

Travel and music have a close relationship. Each day, thousands of people stare out of the window of a train, accompanied by music from their MP3 player. The music almost functions as a soundtrack for the film that passes in front of your eyes. In addition, the repetitive, rhythmic sound of a moving train is used extensively in music, both classical and more modern pieces.

In the composition Voyager: Amongst others British multimedia artist/musician Scanner ‘scans’ the cultural landscape of the Dutch section of the high-speed railway line. The names of places play a crucial role in his empirical investigation of the local significance of language and identity; not only because of their linguistic and topographic aspects, but also because place-names often refer to historical figures, old trades and events, and thus evoke cultural-historic associations with regard to local traditions and folk customs.

In his composition Scanner mixes recorded sounds (the sound of trains, public address announcements in stations, conversations, church bells, barrel organs, birds in the wind) into a mystic ‘soundscape’, with which he constructs a mental bridge between the world of the individual traveller in the train and the landscape outside through which the train races.

Click below to listen to or download Voyager: Amongst Others:

Voyager_HSL_Master.mp3