Railway line Tilburg - Turnhout
The Bels Lijntje was a railway line between Tilburg and Turnhout and this route formed the Dutch part of Railway line 29. Since 1990, the Bels Lijntje has been a cycle path.
Until 1865, the entire area between Turnhout and Baarle-Nassau was dominated by vast heathlands. In that year, construction of the railway line between Turnhout and Tilburg was started and the Weelde-Merksplas station (south of the Steenweg op Zondereigen) was built. The railway line was constructed and operated by the "Grand Central Belge", which is why the railway line was popularly called the "Bels lijntje" in the (North Brabant) vernacular.
In 2009, a lookout tower was placed at the Kleine Klotteraard-Oost fen. This tower, 13 meters high, was built as part of the Nature Development Project Turnhouts Vennengebied-West, in a collaboration between the Agency for Nature and Forests and the Flemish Land Agency. In 2013, reports appeared in the media that Dutch and Belgian municipalities were discussing the possibility of widening the Bels Lijntje, because the cycle path was said to be too narrow for oncoming groups of cyclists.
Wikipedia