Wuppertal Hbf

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Station building

The Bergisch-Märkische station in 1855, lithography by Wilhelm Riefstahl

The smallest metropolitan station in Germany

S-Bahn

Wuppertal Hauptbahnhof (usually translated from German as Wuppertal Central Station, short form: Wuppertal Hbf) is the Hauptbahnhof for the city of Wuppertal, which is just south of the Ruhr Area, in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is on the line between Düsseldorf/Cologne and Dortmund. The 1848 reception building is one of the oldest of its kind. It was originally the main station of Elberfeld and it was also often called Döppersberg station.

[edit] History

In 1841, a few years after the opening of the first railway in Germany, Düsseldorf-Elberfelder Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (Düsseldorf-Elberfeld railway company) began operation. It was the first steam-worked railway line in Western Germany and Prussia.

The line was soon extended its line through Hagen to Dortmund by Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (Bergisch-Märkische railway company), which also took over the Düsseldorf-Elberfelder Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft in 1857.

The first provisional station building became inadequate within a few years. It was decided to build a new building, designed by Hauptner and Ebeling and opened in 1848. Around 1900, a protruding porch was built in front of the ground floor, which conflicted with the architectural design. Nevertheless, this concept was maintained after its reconstruction after World War II. This will be overcome for the first time with the reconstruction of the station starting in 2008.

Although the station possesses only five tracks, less than the other stations of the city, nearly all services running through Wuppertal stop here, except for the S11 S-Bahn service terminating in Vohwinkel.