Dresden-Neustadt station replaced two earlier station located on the Neustadt side of the Elbe, the
Leipziger Bahnhof (Leipzig station), and the
Schlesischen Bahnhof (Silesian station). The latter is considered ita direct predecessor because Neustadt station was built at the same location.
Leipziger Bahnhof Inaugurated in 1839 as the terminus of the Leipzig–Dresden railway, the Leipziger Bahnhof was the first station in Dresden. The rapid growth of traffic and connections to the newly built railway lines made major expansions and renovations and the construction of new buildings necessary in the first decades after its opening. In 1901, the newly built Dresden-Neustadt station took over passenger traffic from the Leipziger Bahnhof. Most of its tracks continued to be used for the Dresden-Neustadt freight yard and some are still used.
Schlesischen Bahnhof The Schlesischen Bahnhof was built between 1844 and 1847 under the direction and to the design of the Dresden architect Julius Köhler and was opened with its ground-level tracks along with the whole Dresden-Neustadt–Görlitz line on 1 September 1847. Designed as a combined road and railway bridge, the first Marienbrücke (the current road bridge) was already under construction, so the plans envisaged a through station, allowing a connection through the city to the planned station of the
Saxon-Bohemian Railway Company. For the present, the southern end of the station only had one
turntable to turn the locomotives. There were two laterally-arranged train sheds, with the departure hall facing Antonstraße and the arrivals hall on the opposite side. The double-sided and symmetrically arranged station building consisted of two protruding wings and a recessed central section. The neo-classical single-storey building included two 96 metres-long train sheds with arched arcades, one covering the arrival platforms and the other the departure platforms. Two other tracks ran between the train sheds that were designed for the movement of rolling stock. The two station buildings differed only with regard to a few functionally-related trifles. The departure platforms could only be accessed through an entrance hall, which contained a ticket office, baggage acceptance facilities and restaurants. In contrast, the arrival platforms were freely accessible and bigger to cope better with the surge of traffic when trains arrived. From the outset, a connecting track joined the freight yard of the Silesian station with the approach tracks of the Leipzig station. There it connected with a turntable. Operationally, however, this connection was unsatisfactory because only individual carriages could be transferred. A few years after the opening of the station, this connection was replaced by a connecting curve that did not involve a turntable and was located a few metres to the north. The Marienbrücke, finished in 1852, enabled the connection of the railway tracks in the old town (Altstädt). The tracks running from the Silesian and Leipzig stations joined in front of the bridgehead. Apart from measures to modernise their operations, the grounds of the Silesian station then remained unchanged until the construction of the Dresden-Neustadt station.
Planning The original railway installations in Dresden were based on no overall concept. Rather, each private railway company had its own station as the terminus of its main line, so by 1875 there were four different and poorly linked long-distance stations in Dresden. In addition, the many level crossings were creating significant traffic problems by the late 1880s when all the railway companies serving Dresden had been nationalised. It was decided to implement a profound transformation of the Dresden railway node under the auspices of Otto Klette, the commissioner of works (
Baurat). This transformation included the merger of the Leipziger and Silesian stations. The Silesian Station was chosen as the site for the new Neustadt station. This required a change in route of the last few kilometres of the Leipzig-Dresden railway so that it was realigned on the modern route from Dresden-Pieschen.
Construction and opening Construction began in the spring of 1898. A temporary station had already been opened on the forecourt on 1 May 1898 to handle the traffic towards Görlitz during the construction period. Although intended only for a limited period, it was equipped with a pedestrian and baggage tunnel. The Dresden-Neustadt passenger station was opened at 5:00 AM on 1 March 1901. An express freight train from Görlitz was the first train to pass through the new complex and was the first to use the new Marienbrücke, which was built for railway traffic only. Passenger train 642 from Bautzen began passenger services at 5:29 AM. In addition to the traffic from Leipzig and Görlitz, the station handled the long-distance traffic from Berlin, which used the last few kilometres of the
Leipzig–Dresden railway, and allowed these trains to connect directly with Dresden Hauptbahnhof, which had been opened three years earlier. The construction costs amounted to 4.1 million
marks. Under the timetable at the opening of the station, 162 trains a day departed from Dresden-Neustadt, as follows: • 77 trains towards Dresden-Hauptbahnhof, • 33 trains on the
Arnsdorf–
Bautzen–Görlitz route, • 28 trains on the
Meissen–
Döbeln–Leipzig route, • 14 trains towards
Riesa–Leipzig route • 10 trains towards Berlin.
Until the end of World War II Only one
luxury train ever operated through Dresden-Neustadt. From 1916 to 1918 a section of coaches of the Balkans Express from Berlin to
Istanbul ran via Dresden with a stop at Dresden-Neustadt. On 22 September 1918, a serious train crash occurred during the entry of Dresden-Neustadt station with the loss of 18 lives. After the abdication of the king of Saxony in 1918, the rooms originally used for royal apartments were used as a railway museum from 1923 to 1945. Exhibits from this collection are now in the
Dresden Transport Museum. From 1936 to 1939, the
Henschel-Wegmann Train operated from Dresden Hauptbahnhof to the
Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin, covering the route in about 100 minutes. In between the train stopped only in Dresden-Neustadt, which underlines the importance of the station for long-distance passengers. During the Second World War, the adjacent Dresden-Neustadt freight yard was the starting point of two
Holocaust trains. On 21 January 1942, a train left the station with unheated freight cars and 224 Jews from the administrative district of Dresden-Bautzen, reaching the
Riga Ghetto four days later. A year later, on 3 March 1943, 293 Jews from Dresden were deported on another train to the
Auschwitz concentration camp A memorial plaque on the right entrance of Dresden-Neustadt station is a reminder of this function of Neustadt freight yard
Reconstruction and operations during the GDR Reconstruction began soon after the war. The need to provide
war reparations to the
Soviet Union proved to be much more difficult than the ravages of war. So the formerly four-track line between Dresden-Neustadt and Coswig was dismantled and reduced to a single track and one of the three tracks to Klotzsche was removed. This resulted in considerable restrictions on the order of operations and required that several trains at a time had to be cleared to run in each direction. Only the reopening of a second track between Dresden-Neustadt and
Radebeul Ost in September 1964 eased the situation on that line. All four tracks over the Marienbrücke towards the Hauptbahnhof were returned to operation in October 1956. On the northeastern approaches to the station important track connections, overpasses and underpasses are still missing, so that the station has not yet achieved its original capacity. German Unity Transport Project (
Verkehrsprojekte Deutsche Einheit) No. 9 is a continuing project designed to eliminate these bottlenecks among other things and to accelerate traffic. Following the upgrade of the approach tracks, local and regional traffic will be separated again. Due to the proximity to military installations in
Albertstadt, the Neustadt station was used for the movement of the Soviet military after the Second World War. Military officers were seated at specially equipped ticket offices with Cyrillic inscriptions and there was a special Soviet shop, also called
Russenmagazin in German (
магазин in Russian). Electrification began on 28 September 1969. Electric push-pull operation commenced between Meissen-Triebischtal and Dresden Hauptbahnhof via Dresden-Neustadt in 1971. The
Dresden S-Bahn opened in January 1973. Also in 1973,
motorail operations commenced from Dresden-Neustadt station, the only place where it operated in the DDR. From May 1972, the
Touristen-Express car-carrying train ran to
Varna and, as of May 1973, the
Saxonia-Express ran to
Budapest. After
Die Wende, the motorail operations from Dresden-Neustadt were abandoned in 1991. Today a car rental service uses the area next to the former loading ramp which lies to the east of the station building next to the parking facilities. On 24 September 1977, the last steam express service, D 1076, hauled by 01 2204, left from Dresden-Neustadt station towards Berlin. In contrast, in local passenger and freight transport, class 52 steam locomotives were still seen in 1987. The platform facilities experienced minor changes in the 1980s. A supervisory building was built between tracks 5 and 6 and taken into operation on 1 June 1980. It is designed from a purely functional point of view and does not correspond to the architecture of the train shed or the old operations building. For the state visit of
Kim Il Sung in July 1984, a platform extension that had been planned for 19 years was realised. The platform between tracks 7 and 8 was extended by the length of two carriage toward the north, so that the delegation did not have cross the gravel. The lobby was renovated for the 150th anniversary of the opening of the first German long-distance railway between Leipzig and Dresden in 1989.
Refurbishment and operation following German reunification The lobby and train sheds were extensively renovated for the station's 100th anniversary in 2001. The latter received new glazing and a lime green wooden roof. The decorative elements in the gable area were restored. The lobby received a modern translucent roof and an
Art Nouveau (
Jugendstil) painting in ochre and green tones, which had been rediscovered in 1997 under layers of plaster, was reconstructed. In addition, the second-largest image ever made in
Meissen porcelain (after the
Fürstenzug) is now displayed on an inner wall of the entrance building. The Meissen porcelain factory created the 90 square-metre mural of 900 tiles designed by the painters Horst Brettschneider and Heinz Werner. It shows Saxony's most beautiful castles and gardens in 22 impressions.
InterCity trains stopped for the first time in Dresden-Neustadt in the summer of 1991, as the new federal states had been included in the intercity network. From 1994,
Intercity-Express trains ran to Dresden for the first time, stopping until September 1998 in Dresden-Neustadt station, where four platforms were increased temporarily to a height of 55 centimetres above the rail to accommodate them.
InterRegio trains ran from 1991 to 2004 via Dresden-Neustadt. They connected Dresden with
Wrocław and
Warsaw, which could not be reached without changing trains after the abandonment of these services. Since 2009, three pairs of
Regional-Expresses have again provided direct services to Wrocław via Görlitz. An
InterConnex ran to Berlin (some continuing to
Stralsund) from 2002 to 2006. Due to the extensive construction at the station, the
EuroCity train on the Berlin-Dresden-Prague route did not stop at Dresden-Neustadt from the timetable change on 13 December 2009 until the end of 2013. EuroCity trains running towards Dresden Hauptbahnhof are still diverted via Cossebaude (as of the 2015 timetable). == Development==