03/06/2026
The angled steel posts in the railway at Mill are a reconstruction of the Dutch anti-train barrier that once stood here. Before dawn on 10 May 1940, a German armoured train ran straight past this point and crossed a fortified line without a shot being fired.
That morning Germany invaded the Netherlands. In the south the Dutch defence rested on the Peel-Raam Line, a string of concrete casemates and obstacles running through the province of North Brabant, built to slow a German advance into the country.
The armoured train and a troop train behind it reached the village of Zeeland, a few kilometres past the Dutch positions, around 04:30. The infantry, the 3rd Battalion of the 481st Regiment, detrained and radioed that the line had been broken. It had not.
The Dutch still held it; the trains had simply slipped through ahead of them. As the armoured train was sent back towards the border, Dutch engineers closed the barrier across the rails at Mill and reinforced it with mines. Panzerzug Nr. 1 could not stop in time. It hit the posts at speed, derailed, and lost its leading carriage into the ditch beside the track.
