Wolfsburg Hauptbahnhof

Wolfsburg Hauptbahnhof
Through station
Wolfsburg Hauptbahnhof
Location	Willy-Brandt-Platz 3, Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony Germany
Coordinates	52°25′45″N 10°47′16″E / 52.42917°N 10.78778°E / 52.42917; 10.78778Coordinates: 52°25′45″N 10°47′16″E / 52.42917°N 10.78778°E / 52.42917; 10.78778
Line(s)	Hanover–Berlin high-speed railway Berlin–Lehrte railway
Platforms	6
Other information
Station code	6859
DS100 code	HWOB
IBNR	8006552
Category	2
Website	www.bahnhof.de
History
Opened	1929 (first station building) 26 August 1957 (current building)
Rebuilt	1956-1957
Electrified	1997
Previous names	Rothenfelde-Wolfsburg (1928-1945) Wolfsburg (1945-2007)

Wolfsburg Hauptbahnhof is the main station of the city of Wolfsburg in the German state of Lower Saxony. It is on the Hanover–Berlin railway and it is the last Intercity-Express stop running east before Stendal or Berlin-Spandau.

Fallersleben station is also located in the district of Wolfsburg-Fallersleben.

On 25 August 2007, the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of the station building, the station was officially renamed Wolfsburg Hauptbahnhof (main station). Years before signs in the city referred to it as the Hauptbahnhof.

The first station in Wolfsburg opened on 4 October 1928 in Rothenfelde. One of the signs at the station read Rothenfelde-Wolfsburg. Previously, passengers to Wolfsburg had use the stations at Fallersleben or Vorsfelde.

The first station building in the town centre, approximately at its current location, was a wooden hut, like many buildings in Wolfsburg in the town’s early days. Shortly after its establishment this fell into a dilapidated condition and served as a place for forced labourers from the Volkswagen factory to sleep at night. The hut was no bigger than a small warehouse and consisted essentially of a waiting room. In contrast to the present station building, this temporary building was north of the railway tracks, next to the Mittelland Canal near the Volkswagen factory. Today, the station building is located south of the tracks on Willy-Brandt-Platz.

The state of the station did not improve during the Second World War; the then city manager Dr. Dahme described it in 1947 in a letter to the Reichsbahndirektion (railway division) of Hanover as follows: "Our station is a miserable shack, which is acceptable for the needs of a Bavarian mountain village, but would under no circumstances be recognised as a railway station for a go-ahead city ..." The desolate, temporary war state, however, lasted until 1957.

The different views of the VW factory, Deutsche Bundesbahn and the city on the site of a new station delayed the start of construction considerably. The VW factory pressed for an early start of the construction project, because in the 1950s more than 5,780 people commuted to work in Wolfsburg every day. Finally, after agreement was reached on the station’s location, its construction started on 6 March 1956. A little later, it was taken into provisional operations, but it was not fully functional until the beginning of the timetable for summer 1957. The new building was officially opened by the Federal Transport Minister Hans-Christoph Seebohm on 26 August 1957.