Mellrichstadt station is a

railway station Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

operated by the

Deutsche Bahn The (; abbreviated as DB or DB AG) is the national railway company of Germany. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin, it is a joint-stock company ( AG). The Federal Republic of Germany is its single shareholder. describes itself as the se ...

in the

Lower Franconian Low Franconian, Low Frankish, NetherlandicSarah Grey Thomason, Terrence Kaufman: ''Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics'', University of California Press, 1991, p. 321. (Calling it "Low Frankish (or Netherlandish)".)Scott Shay ...

town of Mellrichstadt in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

General

The station is located on the

Schweinfurt–Meiningen railway The Schweinfurt–Meiningen railway, route number 5240, is a single-tracked main line in the states of Bavaria and Saxony in southern Germany. It is also called the ''Main-Rhön-Bahn'' ("Main- Rhön railway") and is listed in the Deutsche Bahn ...

in southern

and, since the closure of Mühlfeld station, is the last stop on the

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...

n side of the border with

Thuringia Thuringia (; german: Thüringen ), officially the Free State of Thuringia ( ), is a state of central Germany, covering , the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million. Erfurt is the capital and larg ...

. From 1898, the station was the departure point for the

Mellrichstadt–Fladungen railway The Mellrichstadt–Fladungen railway, also called the Streu Valley Line (), is a Bavarian branch line that connects Mellrichstadt in Lower Franconia () with the town of Fladungen, which nestles in the Rhön mountains. History Public transpor ...

which ran scheduled services until 1987. Since then the line has become a museum railway worked by the ‘’Rhön-Zügle’’ (“Little Rhön Train”).

History

Rail services began on the Meiningen–Schweinfurt route in 1874 and on the branch line to

Fladungen Fladungen is a town in the Rhön-Grabfeld district, in Bavaria, Germany. It is situated in the Rhön Mountains, 11 km northwest of Ostheim, 20 km west of Meiningen, and 33 km east of Fulda. It is the northernmost town in Bavaria ...

in 1898. As a consequence of the division of Germany the

Erfurt Erfurt () is the capital and largest city in the Central German state of Thuringia. It is located in the wide valley of the Gera river (progression: ), in the southern part of the Thuringian Basin, north of the Thuringian Forest. It sits i ...

to Schweinfurt line was cut in 1945. From then on Mellrichstadt became the terminus for trains from

Würzburg Würzburg (; Main-Franconian: ) is a city in the region of Franconia in the north of the German state of Bavaria. Würzburg is the administrative seat of the ''Regierungsbezirk'' Lower Franconia. It spans the banks of the Main River. Würzburg is ...

and Schweinfurt. Until the 1980s there were direct connexions from

Munich Hauptbahnhof Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

to Mellrichstadt; since then however the station has only been served by direct trains from Würzburg and Schweinfurt. Railway operations ceased on the Mellrichstadt–Fladungen branch in 1987. After the

reunification of Germany German reunification (german: link=no, Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process of re-establishing Germany as a united and fully sovereign state, which took place between 2 May 1989 and 15 March 1991. The day of 3 October 1990 when the Ge ...

the gap between Bavaria and Thuringia was closed and, after 46 years, Mellrichstadt is once again a through station. Since 1996 the Fladungen branch has been reactivated as a museum railway, services to all the way through to Mellrichstadt beginning again in 2000.

Services

In 2007 Mellrichstadt station was served every two hours by the Mainfranken-Thüringen Express from

and by the Unterfranken Shuttle from Schweinfurt to

Meiningen Meiningen () is a town in the southern part of the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in the region of Franconia and has a population of around 25,000 (2021).

on the Werra Railway. That results in what is virtually an hourly service between 5 a.m. and 11 p.m. Mellrichstadt station is also the departure point for numerous bus lines belonging to ''Omnibusverkehr Franken'' (OVF) which link up a large part of the Bavarian Rhön, a region of low mountains which extends across the border into

Hesse Hesse (, , ) or Hessia (, ; german: Hessen ), officially the State of Hessen (german: links=no, Land Hessen), is a States of Germany, state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt. Two other major histor ...

and

References

{{commons category, Bahnhof Mellrichstadt, Mellrichstadt station Railway stations in Bavaria Railway stations in Germany opened in 1874