Darmstadt Central Station

Darmstadt Hauptbahnhof S
Through station
Location	Am Hauptbahnhof 20 2, 64293 Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Hesse Germany
Coordinates	49°52′21″N 8°37′44″E / 49.87250°N 8.62889°E / 49.87250; 8.62889Coordinates: 49°52′21″N 8°37′44″E / 49.87250°N 8.62889°E / 49.87250; 8.62889
Line(s)	Odenwald Railway (KBS 641) Main-Neckar Railway (KBS 650) Rhine-Main Railway (KBS 651) to Goddelau until 1970
Platforms	11
Construction
Architect	Friedrich Pützer
Architectural style	Art nouveau
Other information
Station code	1126
DS100 code	FD
IBNR	8000068
Category	2
Website	www.bahnhof.de
History
Opened	1912
Traffic
Passengers	About 30,000
Services
Preceding station   Deutsche Bahn   Following station Langen toward Frankfurt (Main) Hbf RE 60 Main-Neckar Railway Darmstadt Süd toward Mannheim Hbf Langen toward Frankfurt (Main) Hbf RB 67 Main-Neckar Railway Darmstadt Süd toward Mannheim Hbf Langen toward Frankfurt (Main) Hbf RB 68 Main-Neckar Railway Darmstadt Süd toward Heidelberg Hbf Weiterstadt toward Wiesbaden Hbf RB 75 Rhine-Main Railway Darmstadt Nord toward Aschaffenburg Hbf Preceding station   VIAS   Following station Terminus RE 80 Odenwald Railway Darmstadt Nord toward Erbach (Odenw) Terminus RB 81 Odenwald Railway Darmstadt Nord toward Eberbach Preceding station   Rhine-Main S-Bahn   Following station Arheilgen toward Bad Soden S3 Terminus

Darmstadt Hauptbahnhof is the main railway station in the German city Darmstadt. After Frankfurt Hbf and Wiesbaden Hbf, it is the third largest station in the state of Hesse with 35,000 passengers and 220 trains per day.

Built in a late art nouveau style, the station was finished 1912 as one of the major works of architect Friedrich Pützer. The station replaced two separate and increasingly inadequate stations located at the Steubenplatz, around a km closer to the city centre in the east.

The predecessors of Darmstadt Hauptbahnhof were two separate stations in today’s Steubenplatz which were built by two railway companies in the 19th century when Darmstadt was connected to the rail network: the Main-Neckar station, a through station on the Frankfurt–Heidelberg line, opened in 1846, and the Ludwig station, a terminal station on the Mainz–Aschaffenburg railway, opened in 1858.

The space at both stations became very cramped as a result of the increase in traffic at the end of the 19th century. Due to urban growth in Darmstadt, all space at the stations had been used, so that the necessary extensions of the old sites were not possible and the separation into two stations made operations difficult and road traffic on the level crossing of the Main-Neckar Railway over Rheinstraße created an obstruction to traffic.

Beginning in 1901 four different designs were developed, focused primarily on a solving the problems of managing traffic, and subsequently discarded. In 1905, the city and the Prussian-Hessian Railway division in Mainz finally agreed on a fifth draft. It stipulated that a new through station would be built on a then green-field site about 800 metres west of the old stations. The greater distance from the city centre would be compensated by providing a connecting tram. The post office would have its own railway post office north of the entrance building, connected by the "Post Bridge" (Poststeg), its own covered bridge, to trains at the mail and baggage platforms below it. The Post Bridge was demolished in 1994.

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Wikipedia