Friedrichsthal (Saar) station is a station in the town of

Friedrichsthal Friedrichsthal is a town and a municipality in the district of Saarbrücken, of Saarland, Germany. It is situated approximately 13 km northeast of Saarbrücken. Friedrichsthal (Saar) station is located on the Bingen (Rhein)–Saarbrücke ...

in the German state of

Saarland The Saarland (, ; french: Sarre ) is a state of Germany in the south west of the country. With an area of and population of 990,509 in 2018, it is the smallest German state in area apart from the city-states of Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg, and ...

. It is on the

Nahe Valley Railway The Nahe Valley Railway (german: Nahetalbahn) is a two-track, partially electrified main line railway in the German states of Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, which runs for almost 100 kilometres along the Nahe (Rhine), Nahe. It was built by the ...

(''Nahetalbahn'') between

Saarbrücken Saarbrücken (; french: link=no, Sarrebruck ; Rhine Franconian: ''Saarbrigge'' ; lb, Saarbrécken ; lat, Saravipons, lit=The Bridge(s) across the Saar river) is the capital and largest city of the state of Saarland, Germany. Saarbrücken is S ...

and Türkismühle.

History

The station is located on the Saarbrücken−Neunkirchen railway, an important route in the 19th and early 20th century for the transport of coal from the mines to the coal port of Saarbrücken and to southern Germany and France. The first Friedrichsthal station was opened in 1852 and was located at the extreme south-west of the village. The industrial centre of Friedrichsthal was located in this area. In the second half of the 19th century, the station made the establishments of glass works in Friedrichsthal possible. The first station was demolished in 1910 to allow the line to be upgraded and today's building was built a few metres further west. The cost of the renewal of the station (access to the island platform without having to use a pedestrian crossing over the tracks and the construction of the new entrance building) was estimated in 1909 to total 253,000 marks.

Architecture and usage

The entrance building consists of a main building and two lower wings. It has a high, slate-covered

hip roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

, which is equipped with eyebrow dormers and

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

s. A

wall dormer A wall dormer is a dormer whose facial plane is integral with the facial plane of the wall that it is built into, breaking the line of the eaves of a building. Wall dormers are less commonly seen than typical “roof dormers”. They locate the w ...

with wide segment gables emphasises the central axis of the building. The façade is divided by

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

s and

pilaster In classical architecture Classical architecture usually denotes architecture which is more or less consciously derived from the principles of Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, or sometimes even more specifically, from the ...

s, which are constructed on the ground floor of the central section as a wider pillar. The station has an island platform and thus two platform faces. Barrier-free access to the platforms is not possible because there are only stairs. The station building is on a hillside with its ground floor level well below the tracks. The entire building is now protected as a monument. Until the 1980s, the station was busy. There was a station restaurant and a Deutsche Bundesbahn ticket counter. After the railway closed the ticket office in the course of restructuring measures in the 1990s and the premises had become unprofitable, the station was partially rented as a residential building. Nowadays, the station building is empty. It serves only as a passage to the tracks and has become increasingly decayed.

Operations

Friedrichsthal station is served only by Regionalbahn services on line RB 73, running every 30 minutes from Saarbrücken to

St. Wendel Sankt Wendel is a town in northeastern Saarland. It is situated on the river Blies 36 km northeast of Saarbrücken, the capital of Saarland, and is named after Saint Wendelin of Trier. According to a survey by the German Association for Hou ...

(every 60 minutes to Neubrücke (Nahe)).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Friedrichsthal (Saar) station Railway stations in the Saarland Buildings and structures in Saarbrücken (district) Railway stations in Germany opened in 1852 1852 establishments in Prussia