Niederau station is a regional station on the
Leipzig–Dresden railway
The Leipzig–Dresden line is a German railway line. It was built by the Leipzig–Dresden Railway Company between 1837 and 1839. It was the first long-distance railway and the first railway using only steam traction in Germany. It also included ...
in
Niederau
Niederau is a municipality in the district of Meißen, in Saxony, Germany.
Niederau station is located on the Leipzig–Dresden railway, which also used to have Oberau Tunnel
The Oberau Tunnel (''Oberauer Tunnel'') was the second railway tunn ...
in the German state of
Saxony
Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...
. The railway station, which was opened on 15 May 1842, for a long time had the oldest operating station building in Germany, but
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 ...
stopped using it and sold it after 2000.
History
After the opening of the Leipzig-Dresden Railway on 7 April 1839, Oberau station was the closest station to
Meissen
Meissen (in German orthography: ''Meißen'', ) is a town of approximately 30,000 about northwest of Dresden on both banks of the Elbe river in the Free State of Saxony, in eastern Germany. Meissen is the home of Meissen porcelain, the Albrecht ...
, but the inconvenient location of the station high above a cutting on the approach to
Oberau Tunnel
The Oberau Tunnel (''Oberauer Tunnel'') was the second railway tunnel in Germany after a railway tunnel on the Tollwitz–Dürrenberg Railway (''Tollwitz-Dürrenberger Eisenbahn'', a 585 mm gauge mining railway), but it was the first tunne ...
, made access difficult and so Meissen sought easier access to the line. These efforts were successful: the new Niederau station was completed on 1 April 1842 after half a year of construction and the station was opened on 15 May 1842. Simultaneously, a new direct access road was built from Meissen to Niederau, now called Niederauer or Meissner Strasse.
For a while the traffic brought by carriage from Meissen made the station competitive for trains to Leipzig or Dresden with the
Coswig–Meißen branch line, which opened on 1 December 1860 and allowed direct rail journeys from Meissen to Dresden. A line was completed from
Borsdorf
Borsdorf is a municipality in the Leipzig district in Saxony, Germany.
Geography
Modern Borsdorf municipality consists of three historical villages: Borsdorf (originally the smallest among the three, serving as a toll station at the historical ma ...
to Meissen in December 1868, creating a direct rail link between Meissen and Leipzig. Thus Niederau station lost its importance and traffic fell sharply.
Freight operations in Niederau were abandoned on 1 July 1964.
In 1988, one year before the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the first German long-distance railway between Leipzig and Dresden, the station was completely restored.
At that time, the station building was the oldest on the network of
Deutsche Reichsbahn
The ''Deutsche Reichsbahn'', also known as the German National Railway, the German State Railway, German Reich Railway, and the German Imperial Railway, was the German national railway system created after the end of World War I from the regiona ...
In the early 2000s, Deutsche Bahn sold the railway station building.
It is now used as a residence.
The modular building of an
electronic interlocking
In railway signalling, an interlocking is an arrangement of signal apparatus that prevents conflicting movements through an arrangement of tracks such as junctions or crossings. The signalling appliances and tracks are sometimes collectively re ...
(ESTW-A) has been located on the eastern side of the line to the south of the former station building since 2000. This is operated from the electronic control centre (ESTW-Z) in Priestewitz.
Regional services
The station is served by
Regional-Express
In Germany, Luxembourg and Austria, the Regional-Express (RE, or in Austria: REX) is a type of regional train. It is similar to a semi-fast train, with average speed at about 70–90 km/h (top speed often 160 km/h) as it calls at f ...
service RE 50, running between
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
and
Dresden
Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth larg ...
and
Regionalbahn service RB 31, running between
Elsterwerda-Biehla and Dresden (as of December 2014).
Infrastructure
The peculiar two-part main station building is a result of its construction and usage history. The larger part, lying on the left as seen from the tracks, was built as a ''Restaurationsgebäude'' (restaurant building), while the building on the right was built as the station building. Later, they were both rebuilt in the
Swiss chalet style
Swiss chalet style (german: Schweizerstil, no, Sveitserstil) is an architectural style of Late Historicism, originally inspired by rural chalets in Switzerland and the Alpine (mountainous) regions of Central Europe. The style refers to traditi ...
. The building complex is a heritage-listed building.
Entrance building (originally restaurant building)
![BahnhofNiederau1860](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/BahnhofNiederau1860.jpg)
Baroness von Werther, the owner of Oberau Castle, built the building and operated it at first as an inn. The half-timbered building was given a wood sheathing in 1862 and it was plastered with the appearance of
Cyclopean masonry
Cyclopean masonry is a type of stonework found in Mycenaean architecture, built with massive limestone boulders, roughly fitted together with minimal clearance between adjacent stones and with clay mortar or no use of mortar. The boulders typic ...
15 years later. Also in 1877, the premises of the officials' apartments were renovated and a station restaurant was built in the new rooms.
Subsequently the building was used both for residential and station purposes. To emphasize the latter function, it received a
station clock
A station clock is a clock at a railway station that provides a standard indication of time to both passengers and railway staff.
A railway station will often have several station clocks. They can be found in a clock tower, in the booking hall o ...
and the station sign that broke up the previously empty space on the building's gable during a reorganisation in 1988.
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Niederau station
Railway stations in Saxony
Railway stations in Germany opened in 1842
Niederau