Bitburg-Erdorf station is a station on the
Eifel Railway
The Eifel (; lb, Äifel, ) is a low mountain range in western Germany and eastern Belgium. It occupies parts of southwestern North Rhine-Westphalia, northwestern Rhineland-Palatinate and the southern area of the German-speaking Community of ...
in
Bitburg
Bitburg (; french: Bitbourg; lb, Béibreg) is a city in Germany, in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate approximately 25 km (16 mi.) northwest of Trier and 50 km (31 mi.) northeast of Luxembourg city. The American Spangdahlem ...
in the German state of
Rhineland-Palatinate
Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; german: link=no, Rheinland-Pfalz ; lb, Rheinland-Pfalz ; pfl, Rhoilond-Palz) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the ...
. The
Nims–Sauer Valley railway (''Nims-Sauertalbahn'') branched off here to the now closed Bitburg Town station, the remaining part of which is only used for freight traffic and occasional excursion trains. Today Bitburg-Erdorf station is the only station in Bitburg that is served by regular passenger services.
History
Due to the difficult topography and the low population density of the
Eifel
The Eifel (; lb, Äifel, ) is a low mountain range in western Germany and eastern Belgium. It occupies parts of southwestern North Rhine-Westphalia, northwestern Rhineland-Palatinate and the southern area of the German-speaking Community of ...
, railways reached it quite late. In November 1867, the
Rhenish Railway Company
The Rhenish Railway Company (German language, German: ''Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft'', RhE) was along with the Cologne-Minden Railway Company (CME) and the Bergisch-Märkische Railway Company (BME) one of the railway companies that in the m ...
(''Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft'') began building a railway line from
Cologne
Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...
to
Trier
Trier ( , ; lb, Tréier ), formerly known in English as Trèves ( ;) and Triers (see also names in other languages), is a city on the banks of the Moselle in Germany. It lies in a valley between low vine-covered hills of red sandstone in the ...
. After the outbreak of the
Franco-Prussian War, the construction was accelerated, so the route was usable from 15 November 1871.
Already on 25 March 1871,
the station was opened under the name of Erdorf-Bitburg. The construction of the station on the territory of the then still independent municipality of Erdorf met with opposition from among its inhabitants, who feared that the sparks of the locomotives could set the straw roofs of the houses on fire and because the track layout of station required the relocation of the municipal cemetery.
On 21 October 1910, a branch line was opened from Erdorf to Bitburg, which opened as the first part of the Nims-Sauer Valley railway and it was extended from about 1915 through
Irrel to the
Sauer
The Sauer (German and Luxembourgish, , ) or Sûre ( French, ) is a river in Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany. A left tributary of the Moselle, its total length is .
Rising near Vaux-sur-Sûre in the Ardennes in southeastern Belgium, the Sauer f ...
valley and from there to Trier. The construction of the line followed 42 years of discussion about the exact route. To avoid confusion with the town station in Bitburg, the Erdorf-Bitburg station was renamed Erdorf.
In the years before the First World War, all express trains on the Cologne–Trier route stopped at Erdorf.
Due to the war, train traffic between Trier and Cologne was interrupted from the winter of 1944 onwards and only restarted in stages in 1946, so there were no direct connections between Erdorf and these destinations. Shortly after the end of the Second World War, the originally two-track Eifel Railway was rebuilt with one track.
Station building and environment
Station building
The architect
Julius Carl Raschdorff
Julius Carl Raschdorff (2 July 1823 – 13 August 1914) was a German architect and academic teacher. He is considered one of the notable architects of the second half of the 19th century in Germany and created his most important work with the Ber ...
also designed the stations of
Kyllburg
Kyllburg () is a town in the Waldeifel region in the district of Bitburg-Prüm, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is situated in the Eifel mountains, on the river Kyll, approx. 10 km north-east of Bitburg.
Kyllburg was the seat of the for ...
,
Ehrang and
Speicher. Raschdorff, who held a professorship at the Imperial
Technical University of Charlottenburg, is mainly known for the construction of the
Berlin Cathedral
The Berlin Cathedral (german: link=yes, Berliner Dom), also known as the Evangelical Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church, is a monumental German Evangelical church and dynastic tomb (House of Hohenzollern) on the Museum Island in centra ...
.
The building is particularly distinguished by its red sandstone squares and lies between the railway tracks and Mainzer Straße. Build in red sandstone in the
Gothic Revival style
Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...
, similar to other entrance buildings on the Eifel Railway, it makes reference to the landscape and the regional history. The ticket hall, which ends with shield gables, juts out at right angles on both longitudinal sides. The gables are additionally emphasised by pointed arches. The part of the building that adjoins to the south of the ticket hall is accentuated by a projecting bay-like dwarf gable structure. The gabled structures of the north side as well as their embellishments are designed as a work of art.
These splendid "palaces" (''
Schlösser'') were financed from the money that France had to pay as
reparations
Reparation(s) may refer to:
Christianity
* Restitution (theology), the Christian doctrine calling for reparation
* Acts of reparation, prayers for repairing the damages of sin
History
*War reparations
**World War I reparations, made from G ...
to Germany after the Franco-Prussian War.
Three extensions have been added since the completion of the original station. These were, however, inserted in such a way that they are hardly visible to the viewer.
The station building has heritage protection.
Locomotive shed and water supply
From the opening of the Nims-Sauer Valley Railway there was a locomotive shed, and a small
turntable
A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...
at Erdorf station, which existed until the 1960s. At first, there were also
water crane
A water crane is a device used for delivering a large volume of water into the tank or tender of a steam locomotive. The device is also called a water column in the United States and Australia. As a steam locomotive consumes large quantities of ...
s in the station for filling the
steam locomotive
A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...
s on all platforms.
Signal boxes
Erdorf station was equipped with two mechanical
signal box
In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...
es. The signal box for the Nims-Sauer Valley Railway branch is under monument protection. It has a base of quarried limestone with two storeys. Above it there is another storey, which is disguised from the line with timber work. Two small bay windows protrude from the rectangular floor plan.
Train services
Erdorf station was served in the 2017 timetable by the following services:
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bitburg-Erdorf station
Railway stations in Rhineland-Palatinate
Buildings and structures in Bitburg-Prüm
Railway stations in Germany opened in 1871