WWII Bomb Found Near Weesp Station Briefly Halted Train Traffic

A 500-pound aircraft bomb from the Second World War was found near the railway in the town of Weesp, just southeast of Amsterdam, on Wednesday afternoon, briefly halting train traffic at one of the busiest rail junctions in the central Netherlands. The bomb was uncovered around 2:50 pm during excavation works on the Lange Muiderweg, a street that runs along the river Vecht and the Weesp railway.

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A major emergency response

Within an hour of the discovery, the emergency services had scaled up to GRIP 1, a level of coordinated emergency response used when multiple services need to work together. A 250-metre radius around the find was cordoned off, with police, the fire service and ambulances all on the scene. Residents of nearby houseboats were temporarily evacuated.

The Explosive Ordnance Disposal Service of the Dutch defence ministry, known as the EOD, was called in. After examining the device, EOD experts identified it as a 500-pounder, a type of aircraft bomb dropped from planes during the Second World War. The fire service confirmed that the bomb was stable.

It is not yet clear how the bomb came to be at that exact location, the fire service said. Weesp and the surrounding area were bombed several times during the Second World War, particularly because of their strategic position along the railway line and the Vecht.

Trains halted at a key junction

Because the bomb was found close to the tracks and to Weesp railway station, train traffic was halted from 15:47 as a precaution. The disruption hit hard because Weesp is one of the most important railway nodes in the central Netherlands. Trains running between Amsterdam, Schiphol Airport, Amersfoort, Hilversum, Almere and the rest of Flevoland all pass through or near the station.

The timing made the impact worse: the find came shortly before the evening rush hour, with thousands of commuters either already on the move or about to start their journey home. National railway operator NS advised passengers travelling between Amsterdam and Hilversum or Amersfoort to reroute via Utrecht, and said the same alternative route would also work for travellers heading to Almere.

The cordon was lifted around 17:15, and trains began running again about half an hour later. By around 17:45, services were back on schedule, NS said.

What happens to the bomb

According to a spokesperson for the EOD, the 500-pounder can be safely transported and will be taken to another location to be detonated under controlled conditions. A specialised lorry was sent to collect it.

Far from a one-off

For the EOD, finding leftover explosives is everyday work. The service is the only organisation in the Netherlands authorised to clear unexploded munitions from the Second World War, and it is called out around 2,500 times a year, the vast majority of those calls related to wartime explosives.

In its 2025 annual figures, the EOD reported handling 2,931 cases of unexploded bombs or grenades, most of them dating back to 1940-1945. Major construction projects are particularly likely to turn up explosives, especially when new roads, railway lines or housing developments are built in or near areas that were heavily fought over during the war.

Aircraft bombs of this size are still discovered with some regularity. According to the EOD, in some years up to around 200 aircraft bombs are found across the country. In September last year, a similar 500-pounder was uncovered during track works at Raalte railway station, also in the eastern part of the country.

To this day, an estimated 100,000 kilograms of unexploded ammunition is thought to lie buried in Dutch soil, ranging from rifle rounds and grenades to large aircraft bombs. So far, no civilian has been killed in the Netherlands since the war by an unexploded WWII device, although accidents have happened during clearance operations elsewhere in Europe.

For commuters in the Randstad on Wednesday evening, the disruption was a reminder that 80-year-old wartime relics can still bring modern infrastructure to a brief but very real standstill.