Construction and operation by the Rhine Railway Company <1843-1880 Belgium was the second country to start building a
railway network, and plans drawn up for a national network in the 1830s already envisaged a connection to
Cologne so that industry in Belgium could have a transport link through to the rapidly industrialising
Ruhr region in
western Prussia without incurring the intervening cost of high Dutch tolls. Thirteen years later, in early 1858 the British monarch's
eldest daughter passed through Herbesthal with
her new husband en route to a new home in Germany where thirty years later they would briefly become empress and emperor. Nevertheless, the outbreak of war brought an end to civilian passenger transport, and the border crossing passed from the control of the national railway company into that of the army, who also took control of the railways in
occupied Belgium. Herbesthal became critically important as a transit location and as a replenishment location for the armies on the western front. At the same time, thousands of wounded soldiers stranded on the way home from the front received medical care and treatment here. Additionally, more than 70,000 forced labourers from Belgium were channeled into Germany through Herbesthal. Towards the end of the war the station fell into the hands of plunderers returning from the front. Herbesthal station became the focus of so much congestion that an alternative less southerly route, today known as the
Montzen route, was constructed by the Germans between 1915 and 1917, entering occupied Belgium from
Aachen via
Tongeren, completely avoiding Herbesthal and, indeed,
Liège. War ended in defeat in November 1918, to be followed by
revolution and
republican government at home, and the
Treaty of Versailles drawn up in France.
Eupen and
Malmedy were transferred from Germany to Belgium, along with the adjacent enclave of
Moresnet which had enjoyed a strangely ambiguous political status since 1816. The border changes were mandated in 1919 and their implementation began in January 1920. The actual frontier moved a short distance up the line to the southern entrance of the (subsequently renewed)
Busch Tunnel. Herbesthal now found itself transported into Belgium. Nevertheless, until 1940 it continued to operate as the frontier station on the mainline, with the difference that now the customs and passport officials were working on the Belgian side of the frontier for the Belgian government. Directly following the war there were relatively few "stopping trains" carrying passengers beyond Herbesthal into Germany using the new German frontier control station near the hamlets at
Astenet and
Hergenrath. However, passenger traffic slowly recovered through the 1920s. The
Ostend-Vienna Express and the
Northern Express returned and were joined in 1929 by a third luxury express service, the
Ostend-Cologne Pullman Express, though only the eastbound trains took the route passing through Herbesthal. During the 1920s Herbesthal increasingly lost one of its important pre-war functions, with the train operators now switching between Belgian and German locomotives not at the frontier but at Aachen. Belgium was again invaded by German troops in
May 1940, although developments in motor transport during the previous two decades meant that the generals were no longer quite so dependent on the rail network as they had been for the First World War. During approximately
52 months of German occupation Herbesthal temporarily recovered its status as the German frontier station.
Towards network electrification and station closure 1945–1966 Postwar revival After 1945 it was again the
SNCB (National Railway Company of Belgium) using Herbesthal as their frontier station. In contrast to the position before the war, there were now no local trains operating to
Aachen. Locomotive switching between Belgian and German locomotives returned to Hebesthal. It was not till 1947 that, initially only for a small number of trains, operators reverted to switching locomotives at Aachen, and Herbesthal retained its importance as the principal locomotive switching location through most of the 1950s. Before the war the locomotives housed and maintained at Herbesthal had been those used for local passenger and goods trains, but during the later 1940s there were fewer of these, initially because of austerity and then during the 1950s because of the growth in road transport. Herbesthal now became the home deport for the "Pacific class"
NMBS/SNCB Type 1s, built in the late 1930s but still used for the prestigious international luxury trains, and during the 1950s the most powerful high speed steam locomotive used in Belgium. Herbesthal was again one of the most important frontier stations in western Europe. Not only the
Northern Express, but also the
Tauern Express were now making the switch between German and Belgian locomotives at Herbesthal. When the
Trans Europ Express (TEE) network was set up in 1957, Herbesthal was where Belgian TEE train staff took over the railcars for the Belgian sections.
Electrification Towards the end of the 1950s both the
West German state railways (DB) and the
Belgian state railways (SNCB) started planning for electrification. Belgium was committed to a 3 kW
DC network while the Germans had opted for
a 15 kW AC power supply. At this stage dual-voltage and multi-voltage locomotives were far from mainstream in Europe, which imposed a greater level of inflexibility on decisions about where to change power supply systems and locomotives. In the end the decision was taken that for trains operating along the line from Liège to Aachen, switching of the power supply and locomotives should be centralised some distance inside Germany, at Aachen, where the equivalent switch would also be made for trains coming from the Netherlands. An added advantage of choosing Aachen was that many international passenger trains were already held up there while being reconfigured, as blocks of carriages from the directions of
Rotterdam and
Brussels were split or merged for the next part of their journeys across Germany. Where this happened there was little or no incremental time-cost involved in switching locomotives at the same time. Work began on electrification of main lines in 1961, and this immediately involved some of the international trains headed towards Brussels and Ostend being rerouted onto the
Montzen Route to the north, thereby avoiding Herbesthal completely. Passenger services along the branch line to the east, via
Eupen to
Raeren in Germany had already been ended on 28 March 1959, so that by 1961 Herbethal had also lost its function as an interchange station.
Language politics Within Belgium the 1950s saw a growth in friction between Dutch speakers and French speakers over language usage.
Legislation came into operation in 1962 that divided Belgium into four language areas. The largest two areas, and those with the greatest political muscle, were the Flemish speaking area centred on
Ghent, Antwerp and Hasselt, and the French speaking area centred on Charleroi and Liège. The city of Brussels had language issues of its own. and was defined as a third language area, while there was a very small fourth language area in the extreme east of the country, made up essentially of the land confiscated from Germany in 1920, where the dominating language was still German. Herbesthal was in the small German speaking enclave, while 200 meters to the west Welkenraedt was in the French language area. Although passport and customs checks were by now increasingly conducted by officials as the train continued on its way, there remained a need for administrative offices on each side of the frontier. For the Liège/Aachen international line these were increasingly focused on
Aachen itself on the German side of the frontier, while on the Belgian side, following the definition of more clearly delineated language zones, customs and passports offices were relocated a couple of hundred meters to the west to francophone Welkenraedt, which left the station at Herbesthal looking ever more unnecessary.
Closure The electrification project was completed on the line and the electrified traction system commissioned on 22 May 1966. Herbesthal station was formally closed on 7 August 1966. By this time the station's rail depot had been largely closed. A few sidings which had comprised the western section of the Herbesthal depot were reassigned to the adjacent station at Welkenraedt. == Locomotive depot ==