Falkenberg (Elster) station is one of the biggest stations in the German state of Brandenburg. It is located in the town of Falkenberg/Elster in the south of the state. It is classified by Deutsche Bahn as a category 3 station. Railways run in seven directions from the station. It is a two-level interchange station (, literally a “tower station”), built where several routes interconnect. There is a large marshalling yard connecting to both the upper and the lower parts of the station. At times Falkenberg was the fifth largest marshalling yard in East Germany (GDR). Only part of these tracks have been in use since the 1990s.
A large station building, which had been built in 1882, was destroyed in the Second World War. A restaurant complex built in GDR times was substantially rebuilt after 2010 and now serves as the entrance building. A number of buildings of the station and its surrounds are heritage-listed.
Location and name
The station is situated mostly in the town of Falkenberg/Elster in the Elbe-Elster district not far from the state borders of Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. Originally the station was called Falkenberg (b. Torgau), but it received its present name in 1937. While the town is written Falkenberg/Elster (with a slash), the station is written with parentheses.
The station building is located at km 111.9 of the Jüterbog–Röderau railway, which runs north–south, at kilometer 148.2 of the Węgliniec–Roßlau railway, which runs from southeast to northwest, and at kilometer 95.0 of the Halle–Cottbus railway, which runs west–east. The latter line runs through the upper level of Falkenberg station, while the others run through the lower level. The Lower Lusatian Railway (Niederlausitzer Eisenbahn), which runs to the northeast, also begins at the lower station.
The station has extensive marshalling yards, both connected to the lower and the upper stations and extending over several kilometres. The eastern part of the upper station extends to the territory of the town of Uebigau-Wahrenbrück.
The centre of the town of Falkenberg is located west of the line from Berlin and north of the line from Halle. The original village centre and its manor was about 400 metres from the station.
History
The Berlin-Anhalt Railway Company (, BAE) opened its line from Berlin to Köthen (then spelt Cöthen) in 1841. It planned from the beginning, an additional line that would connect Berlin with Leipzig and Dresden. The towns of Herzberg, Uebigau and Liebenswerda were stubbornly opposed to the railway having direct contact with their towns. So a slightly more westerly route was chosen that passed near the small village and manor of Falkenberg. The station was initially a small halt with a station master, a telegrapher, two signalmen and some shunters.
A railway from Falkenberg to Cottbus was opened by the Halle-Sorau-Guben Railway (Halle-Sorau-Gubener Eisenbahn, HSGE) on 1 December 1871. At first the trains stopped in the lower part of the old station. A line running to the west from Falkenberg via Eilenburg to Halle was opened on 1 May 1872. In the same year the Upper Lusatian Railway Company (Oberlausitzer Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft) began construction of its line from Kohlfurt (now Węgliniec) to Falkenberg, which was opened on 1 June 1874. This was followed by the BAE's extension of its line from Wittenberg on 15 October 1875, creating connections to lines to Halle and Dessau. The BAE took over the management on the lines of the Upper Lusatian Railway Company in 1878. The traffic on all three lines became very active in the following years, so that Falkenberg became an important railway junction. In 1882 a new, larger station building was built at the intersection of the upper and lower lines. In the same year the Prussian government took over the management of the lines of the BAE and two years later it took over the HSGE. Nevertheless, the names of the Halle-Sorauer Bahnhof (Halle-Sorau station) for the upper level and the Berlin-Anhalter Bahnhof (Berlin-Anhalt station) for the lower level persisted.
The then competent Staatsbahndirektion (railway division) of Erfurt combined the two workshops of the BAE and HSGE, and from 1887 they were referred to as an operating workshop (Betriebswerkstätte), which later developed into a locomotive depot (Bahnbetriebswerk).
Expansion after 1890
Traffic increased significantly to Falkenberg at the end of the 19th century. The three main railway lines were doubled from 1896 to 1912 to overcome their capacity constraints. The station facilities with the marshalling yards and workshops were extended. A new water tower was built in 1895 and another engine shed was put in operation at the lower station in 1908. The last of the railways built to Falkenberg was opened on 15 March 1898, the private Lower Lusatian Railway to Uckro.
In a train accident in the summer of 1934, a freight train in the lower part on station ran into another and the vehicles pushed off the track collided with an oncoming train. One man was killed.
The Wehrmacht opened a large army airfield at Alt-Lönnewitz southwest of Falkenberg in 1936. A connecting railway ran to it from the top station, which carried materials and airfield employees.
The station had 20 km of mainline track and 93 km of sidings with 324 points in 1939. It had 20 signal boxes and three engine sheds on the upper and lower part of the station. The exits from the marshalling yard handled 4,000 freight wagons a day from the top part and 2,400 from the lower part of the station. There was a siding to the airport with branches to a substation and to the Falkenberg branch of the Torgau grain cooperative.
In World War II, construction began on a multi-track upgrade of the line toward Jüterbog, which was not completed. Some embankments have been preserved. The work was carried out largely by the use of forced labourers and prisoners of war.
Because of the strategic importance of the station, with its marshalling yards and the nearby Falkenberg airfield, it was a target for several Allied bombing raids in the Second World War. The most serious of these attacks occurred in April 1945. On 18 April, the entrance building, the crossing structure and a number of buildings in the area were completely destroyed. After radio reports had already announced that there would be further attacks on the day with the goal of total destruction of the Falkenberg railway junction, bomb raids were primarily carried out on the lower station and a number of buildings were destroyed, including the locomotive depot.
After the Second World War
A few days after the war, Soviet troops under station commander Braschenko began rebuilding the strategic rail facilities on 15 May 1945. In the following months, the railway lines out of Falkenberg were gradually returned to operation, at first provisionally. All tracks were usable again in 1948.
In GDR times, the station was expanded and included 160 km of railway tracks and 377 sets of points.Erich Preuß, Klaus Pöhler, Deutsche Bahnhöfe: Das große Gleisplanbuch, GeraMond, 2011, , S. 68. In addition to the north-eastern connecting curve from the lower to the upper station, which had existing since the 19th century, a connecting curve was built south-east of the crossing, allowing direct trips from the west to the lower station, allowing operations to Elsterwerda without having to reverse in the upper yard. The locomotive depot became one of the largest in East Germany with about 500 employees. About 5,000 freight wagons left Falkenberg each day in the 1970s and 1980s.
The station was also important for national defence. Freight tracks were temporarily provided with platforms for travelling Soviet soldiers so that they could use the washing facilities. A new restaurant building was opened for Mitropa in 1972.
The first electrically powered passenger train reached Falkenberg from the direction of Wittenberg on 27 September 1986 and the electrification went into operation towards Riesa on 13 December 1986. Electrification was extended towards Ruhland in October 1987. The other three main railway branches towards Jüterbog, Torgau and Finsterwalde were electrified in 1989.
The importance of the station for freight fell substantially after 1990 due to the decline in industrial production in the region and the modal shift to road transport. The fleet in the depot was increasingly reduced after 1991 and the Wittenberg depot was closed in 1994. In 1998, the depot's work was transferred to the Leipzig-Engelsdorf depot and a little later the station was converted into a purely passenger operation without responsibility for any rollingstock.
In 2010 and 2011, the passenger platforms were built in the upper part of the station and the railway facilities were transformed. The former Mitropa building was completely rebuilt. The upper railway yard was taken over in 2011 by BLG AutoRail, which uses it as a "hub for car transportation by rail".
Environment
The town of Falkenberg has been decisively shaped by the railways. In the first years, the station of Falkenberg was only a minor station as the town had developed very little at this time. Immediately prior to the construction of the railway, Falkenberg had 350 inhabitants, while it had 405 at the time of the opening of the east–west line. With the construction of the east–west line and the later line from Wittenberg to Kohlfurt Falkenberg, it became a railway junction and the village grew considerably. A number of railway workers settled in the city. The area between the railway station and the old town centre was gradually built up. The post office was opened next to the entrance building in 1888.
At the end of the 19th century, the expanding railway tracks were more and more of a hindrance to road traffic. An overpass was built over the tracks in 1896 to replace the level crossing at Uebigauer Straße north of the platforms of the lower station.
From 1897, a cooperative built, with the help of a loan, tenement-like houses in several streets west of the station; these included stables, a little garden land and community laundry rooms. This area is now a heritage-listed area as the Eisenbahnersiedlung Falkenberg (Falkenberg railway settlement). In 1912, the manor came into the possession of the municipality, allowing new construction areas to be identified, mainly east of the railway. In the 1920s, more apartments were built and by 1925 Falkenberg had become the largest town in the former district of Liebenswerda with 4,850 inhabitants.
In 1962, the town, then having about 7,000 inhabitants, received a charter declaring it a town. The town's coat of arms includes a winged wheel as a symbol of the railway.
Description
Shortly after the completion of the line, a small entrance building was built in Falkenberg on the west side of the tracks of the Anhalt Railway. After the completion of the other two main lines, a large entrance building was built in the angle between the east–west and north–south lines. The building was destroyed during the Second World War. Thereafter, the original station building was again used as the entrance building. In 1985, the building was substantially rebuilt with significant changes to its outer shape. It later served to house station services. This building was empty when it was sold at auction in December 2013.
In the 1970s, a new building was built south of the entrance building as a Mitropa restaurant. After 1990, the restaurant building was closed temporarily and then used from 2000 as a kiosk before being completely reconstructed in 2010. The restored building was inaugurated in 2011 and now includes a restaurant and the office of the local bus operator, Lehmann-Reisen. There is also a sales point for integrated tickets and Deutsche Bahn tickets. Before the reconstruction, a small building used for the sale of tickets had been located north of it on a platform.
Platforms