Görlitz station

World War II

Since the city was located at an important east-west connection, since the beginning of the war increased military transport through the station to the east. However, the station was largely spared any direct effects of the war. Although in August 1940 British airmen flew over the city and bombed various destinations, the station was not one of them. It was not until 11:47 pm on 20 February 1945 that Soviet front-line aircraft attacked the station, leaving only minor damage. A bomb tore a hole in the roof and wall of the locomotive shed of the neighboring Görlitz depot. The factory had its own air-raid shelter. Other station employees sought in air raid the public air raid shelter at the south exit below the Cathedral of St. James.

The approaching front forced the administration of the Reichsbahndirektion Wroclaw to evacuate the services. In the early morning of January 27, 1945, the president of the Reichsbahndirektion and his special staff arrived in Görlitz with a command train. Until the Soviet army closed the ring around the fortress Breslau, daily between the two cities a railcar train in courier traffic. The train was reserved for people with a courier pass. In mid-February 1945, the relocation of the executive staff began in the direction of Erfurt.

Sections in the operation were mainly in the electrical operation on the Silesian mountain railway towards the end of the war, where again a mixed operation was performed with steam and electric locomotives. In February 1945, during the Soviet attack on the city, the substation Lauban was badly damaged. The overhead line systems were also affected. With the reconquest of Lauban by Wehrmacht units on March 9, 1945, the operation could be resumed briefly on the route Görlitz-Lauban. However, the electrical operation was no longer possible due to the destroyed power supply. The remaining electric locomotives were also transferred to the west, to bring them to safety before the advancing Red Army. The demolition of the Neißeviadukts on May 7, 1945 meant the end of electrical operation on the route in the direction of Hirschberg. At the same time, three arches of the viaduct collapsed. The catenary was also interrupted. Until the end of 1945, the tracks between the two bridge fragments hung and served refugees from the east to escape to the west side of the Neisse. The currentless overhead line between viaduct and shunting yard Schlauroth was dismantled in the autumn of 1945. The catenary masts, on the other hand, were either given a new function or fell victim to the scrapping campaign between 1968 and 1970. Some masts were used as load gauge or served until 2011 as lighting pylons at the west exit.

On May 8, 1945, the Red Army occupied the city and also brought the station under their control. Under the commandant of the city, Colonel General Ijitsch Nesterow, a Soviet station command was established, which controlled and controlled the traffic around the station until mid-August 1945. The station was after the blowing up of the Neisseviadukts and all other Neisse bridges the routes to Seidenberg and Zittau in the south, the blasted Löbauer viaduct in the west and the destroyed by the Neisse offensive of the Red Army in the north at Kodersdorf route to Cottbus completely isolated. On 23 July 1945 reversed two pairs of trains to the north of Görlitz located Horka. Two days later it was possible to drive to Weißwasser again. On August 6, 1945, the shuttle service between Löbau East, a temporary stop on the eastern bridgehead of the Löbauer Viaduct, and Görlitz was resumed. After the Löbauer and the Bautzen Viaduct were again provisionally passable, reversed on November 10, 1945, the first passenger train from Görlitz to Dresden-Neustadt. The first train connection to and from Zittau existed from September 9, 1945. The Neisse Valley Railway was thus the first again continuously passable railway line from Görlitz. In the following year, the Polish administration blocked the parts of the route on their territory for through traffic. Between Görlitz and Hagenwerder now the shuttle traffic was added. During the reconstruction up to and including 1946 had the Soviet Union dismantle the second track on all entering into the station lines and also railway tracks and transport the material obtained as a reparation.

With a command of the Soviet military administration of 11 August 1945, the railway operation was returned to the German authorities. The station now no longer belonged to the Reichsbahndirektion Wroclaw, but was subordinate since then the Reichsbahndirektion Dresden. Also at the founding of the Reichsbahndirektion Cottbus in 1946, the station initially remained under Dresden administration.

Cold War

With a restructuring on 1 January 1955 the station came to the management district Cottbus; There he remained until the dissolution of the directorate in October 1990. In the 1950s, rail traffic took place in all directions again. Since July 1, 1948, the trains of the Görlitzer circular track ended in Görlitzer station. Previously, the trains only went up to the district station Görlitz West on the Rauschwalder road. [28] [27]

The station had also in GDR times great importance in long-distance and local traffic. In 1952, Polish workers began to rebuild the Neisse Viaduct. The basis for this was the Görlitz Agreement, concluded in 1950, in which the GDR and the People's Republic of Poland recognized the Oder-Neisse border as the state border between the two states. The cross-border travel into the "socialist brotherland" - the People's Republic of Poland - on the rebuilt Neisse Viaduct was solemnly inaugurated on May 22, 1957. For this purpose, the platform IV was extended with the tracks 11 and 12 and built in 1957/1958 by the Hochbaumeisterei (Hbm) Görlitz a border customs building on the west side of the platform. In the middle of the platform, a metal fence should make it impossible to cross the border without controls. German border guards and customs officers controlled the trains directly at the platform. In the 1960s, up to six international pairs of passenger trains stopped daily in Görlitz. The locomotive and personnel change in the trains took place until the setting of the last locomotive cross-border Interregiozugpaare on December 11, 2004 in Görlitz station instead. [20] [29] [30]

In 1956, the allocation of wired glass was able to remedy the damage to the platform hall caused by the war. From 1985 microelectronics arrived. All signal boxes, shunting locomotives and the complete shunting personnel were equipped with radio technology. The ticket issue received a computerized ticket printer and access to the electronic seat reservation system. The first ticket vending machines with interactive operation also came to the station. With the political change in the east of Germany in 1989, a strong rush to the trains to Berlin and into the Federal Republic began. From 1991, the number of travelers dropped sharply as more and more citizens preferred private transport. [29]

View of the storage group with the steam locomotive 18 201; on the right the large washing plant GWA-4

In the years 1963/64, the employees of the Technical Facilities division of the railway car depot Löbau (Bww) built the large-scale washer GWA-4 in the eastern parking area of the station. It was the only stationary outdoor cleaning system in the entire Reichsbahndirektion Cottbus. The employees of the car cleaning were housed since 1945 in the social building on the east side of the station. In the following years, the employees of the Technical Equipment department also created the compressed air supply (1968) and the chimney for the preheating plant (1981) of the station. Since 1953, the wagon masters were no longer part of the local railway depot. They formed from now on the independent Wagenmeistereiposten Görlitz in the field of technical wagon service of Bww Löbau. The service rooms were initially housed in the building next to the station water tower. Later, the employees moved into a developed building at the west end of platform III between the tracks 9 and 10. In the beginning, one wagon master per shift, so the occupation was increased from 1966 to three wagon masters per shift due to the increased travel and freight train volume , The tasks of the Wagenmeister included checking the passenger and freight cars for their technical condition, the brake test and the brake samples. Also the examination of load crossings and accident investigations belonged to the task spectrum of the Wagenmeistereipostens. Five years after the start of cross-border traffic to Poland, a car border post was set up in Görlitz in 1962, which was responsible for registering the incoming and outgoing freight wagons and settling the wagon hiring. In the early 1970s, three train sets for international traffic were located in Görlitz. Initially, new wagons from the VEB Waggonbau Bautzen were used for this purpose, which were replaced at the end of the 1970s by wagons from the new construction program of the Halberstadt state railway repair works. They operated from Görlitz to the West German terminus stations in Frankfurt am Main, Cologne, Munich and Stuttgart. It also provided for the handling of six cross-border passenger trains and four freight trains to and from Poland and 66 domestic trains.

In 1984, the station hall ceiling was completely restored. The building has since become a historical monument.

Although steam traction was officially abandoned at the Deutsche Reichsbahn in 1988, steam locomotives could still be seen at the station until the beginning of 1990. They were used to preheat passenger trains until the introduction of an electric train preheating system.

Reunification

On 22 November 1991, the first station mission of the new federal states was opened at Görlitzer station, after they were closed in the 1950s in the GDR. Until 1995, she was housed in a trailer and then moved premises at the south exit. For the first time, a predecessor organization of today's station mission offered its auxiliary services at the turn of the century in Görlitz. This made the city one of the first in Germany with such a facility.

After the turn of the station lost importance. In 1993 the goods handling was closed, two years later the railway post office. In the mid-1990s, the comprehensive reconstruction of the track systems began. The outer platform with the tracks 3 and 4, last used mainly by the trains towards Zittau, was abandoned in 2000. For the Zittau railway line, tracks 7 and 8 were used. The redevelopment of the eastern track field made it possible to demolish the northern part of the Jakobstunnel and to replace the southern part, over which all eastbound tracks now run, with a new one. Since the commissioning of the electronic interlocking (ESTW) Görlitz on June 25, 2000, the points and signals are controlled from the operations center in Leipzig. The local signal boxes lost their function and were broken down to the equator B5 in the western track apron in the first half of 2004. [35] In October 2009, construction began on the installation of passenger lifts from the passenger tunnel up to platforms II (tracks 7 and 8) and IV (tracks 11 and 12). The installation cost 1.3 million euros and was completed in September 2010. At the same time, the doors of the lobby to the passenger tunnel and the station forecourt were equipped with automatic door openers.

In 2012, the platform roofing of Platform II at the eastern end was dismantled behind the elevator to the Postal Tunnel. The platform on track 8 and stump track 31 was once the post office. The stairway from the passenger tunnel to the free-lift platform was also closed. A gate prevented access to the platform from the stairs even the years before.

On March 25, 2013 filming of the film "The Book Thief" took place in the station concourse. For this purpose platform II was blocked with the tracks 7 and 8 for traffic. The platform was for this purpose with historical props, such. B. wooden benches and swastika flags equipped and transformed into the station of the fictional Roman city Molching in the 1930s. The platform was flanked on both sides by two historic, steam-powered passenger trains with so-called blunderbusses.

With the change of operator in the Ostsachsennetz from the DB Regio to the Vogtlandbahn (today "the country railway", brand Trilex) in December 2014 the ticket automats of the German course were degraded at the stations, thus also at the station Görlitz in the entire compound space of the ZVON. However, the travel center of Deutsche Bahn was preserved. In March 2015, Deutsche Bahn had the car wash demolished on the eastern parking area and cut down 200 meters of track. Furthermore, six switches were renewed and two completely removed.

Due to a special permit, Polish locomotives without German train control system PZB 90 have been allowed to enter Görlitz station since the end of 2015. However, according to press reports, a German-speaking pilot is required for the section between Zgorzelec and Görlitz. Since the timetable change on 13 December 2015, in addition to the up to three daily train pairs of the Dresden-Wrocław Express, four train pairs of the Polish railway operator Koleje Dolnośląskie run between Jelenia Góra and Węgliniec.

The station is expected to be extensively renovated and modernized between 2016 and 2020. Here, the lobby should be redeveloped and made lighter and the south exit barrier-free to be rebuilt. Also the platform on the tracks 9 and 10 is to receive a lift to the passenger tunnel. In March 2013, the first conversations took place between the Verkehrsverbund Oberlausitz-Niederschlesien (ZVON) and Deutsche Bahn. However, the exact scope and funding of the work was still unclear at this time. According to estimates by the transport association, the investment costs amount to a low double-digit million amount. In January 2017, it became known that Deutsche Bahn canceled the work on the station concourse. This includes the repair of all steel components, the renewal of foundations, drainage and roofing with glazing. The start of construction is scheduled for 2020 and should be about two years. The plans for a lift to the 9/10 tracks are to be tendered separately.