Geilenkirchen station

Geilenkirchen
Through station
Location	Bahnhofstr. 1, Geilenkirchen, North Rhine-Westphalia Germany
Coordinates	50°57′40″N 6°7′27″E / 50.96111°N 6.12417°E / 50.96111; 6.12417Coordinates: 50°57′40″N 6°7′27″E / 50.96111°N 6.12417°E / 50.96111; 6.12417
Line(s)	Aachen–Mönchengladbach railway
Platforms	3
Other information
Station code	2037
DS100 code	KGEK
IBNR	8002206
Category	4
Website	www.bahnhof.de
History
Opened	12 November 1852
Services
Preceding station   Deutsche Bahn   Following station Übach-Palenberg toward Aachen Hbf RE 4 Wupper-Express Lindern toward Dortmund Hbf RB 33 Rhein-Niers-Bahn Lindern toward Duisburg Hbf

Geilenkirchen station is in Geilenkirchen in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia on the Aachen–Mönchengladbach railway. It is the only railway station in the town of Geilenkirchen. It provided an interchange between the mainline railway and the Geilenkirchen District Railway (Geilenkirchener Kreisbahn) until 1971 and was a stop for long-distance traffic until 2001. It is classified by Deutsche Bahn as a category 4 station.

Geilenkirchen station has an entrance building that includes a waiting room, a ticket office and a fast food restaurant.

Geilenkirchen station has three platform tracks for passengers. All tracks are used by scheduled trains. Two Euregiobahn services terminate and reverse at platform track 3 on weekday mornings. Furthermore, there is a siding for WestEnergie und Verkehr GmbH (the municipal electrical and transport company of the Heinsberg district). Freight wagons, mostly hauled to the siding by locomotives of class 294, are regularly unloaded there. During construction on the line the siding is also used by work trains, such as during the works in relation to the connections to the electronic interlocking in Grevenbroich in October 2007.

Up to 5 November 2007, the dispatcher at Geilenkirchen signal box Gf controlled three crossings, turnouts and the signals in the station. On 5 November 2007, this task was taken over by the Grevenbroich electronic signalling centre at the completion of its second phase of construction. After numerous acts of vandalism at the abandoned signal boxes between Rheydt and Ubach-Palenberg, the doors to all signal boxes on the section, including Geilenkirchen, were replaced with security doors and the boxes’ windows were secured with perforated plates in November 2009.

Geilenkirchen station was opened in 1852 with the opening of the Herzogenrath–Rheydt section. The station of the Geilenkirchen District Railway was opened next to it in 1900. Because of its central location, this was the largest on the District Railway. The station of the District Railway had a roundhouse and workshops. Because of the metre gauge of the District Railway, it was not possible to shunt freight wagons directly onto the tracks of the state railway. These required the use of special loading tracks. In 1938, the Rollbock system was installed, allowing standard gauge wagons to be carried over the metre-gauge tracks of the Geilenkirchen District Railway. The station freight handling thus consisted of two buildings, a warehouse for freight and baggage handling and a loading bay and a terminal track for loading and unloading wagons onto the Rollbock system (as Geilenkirchen has a Bundeswehr facility). After the end of the rail operation of the District Railway, the bus depot was later built on the grounds of the Geilenkirchen District Railway by Kreiswerke Heinsberg (the municipal utility of the Heinsberg district). It transports passengers by buses, which have now replaced the passenger trains of the District Railway. Kreiswerke Heinsberg has since been renamed WestEnergie und Verkehr.

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Wikipedia