Garmisch-Partenkirchen station (german: Garmisch-Partenkirchen Bahnhof ) is a junction station in the German State of

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 ...

. It is the biggest station in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. It has five platform tracks and is classified by Deutsche Bahn as a category 3 station. The station has about 50 services daily operated by DB Regio and some long-distance services operated by Deutsche Bahn. It is on the lines connecting Munich and Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Innsbruck (the

Mittenwald Railway The Mittenwald Railway (german: Mittenwaldbahn), popularly known as the Karwendelbahn (Karwendel railway), is a railway line in the Alps in Austria and Germany. It connects Innsbruck via Seefeld (both in Tyrol, Austria) and Mittenwald to Garmi ...

) and Garmisch-Partenkirchen and

Reutte Reutte (; Swabian: ) is a market town in the Austrian state of Tyrol. It is the administrative center of the Reutte district (''Districts of Austria''). Reutte is located on the Lech, and has a population of 6704 (as of 2018). Neighbouring muni ...

(the

Ausserfern Railway The Ausserfern Railway (german: Außerfernbahn) is a cross-border railway line in the German state of Bavaria and the Austrian state of Tyrol. The single-tracked branch line starts from Kempten in Germany, before crossing into Austria just after p ...

History

The station was established on 25 July 1889 as the terminus of a branch line from Munich opened by

Lokalbahn AG The Lokalbahn AG company (''Lokalbahn Aktien-Gesellschaft''), or 'LAG' for short, was a private company based in Munich, Bavaria, whose lines of business was the construction and operation of branch lines (the so-called ''Lokalbahnen'' or ''Sekundä ...

. It was initially connected to Munich by four to six pairs of trains daily. On 1 July 1912, was the line was extended with the opening of the Mittenwald Railway and Garmisch-Partenkirchen was now a through station. The line was electrified in the course of the extension of the Mittenwald line to Innsbruck, opened on 25 April 1913. In May 1913, the Ausserfern Railway was opened from

to the station. This was electrified from the start. A special feature for decades was the operational stop for Austrian through trains between Innsbruck and Reutte. This was necessary so that trains could reverse direction in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, but passengers were not allowed on or off, which would have required customs and immigration clearance until the implementation of the

Schengen Agreement The Schengen Agreement ( , ) is a treaty which led to the creation of Europe's Schengen Area, in which internal border checks have largely been abolished. It was signed on 14 June 1985, near the town of Schengen, Luxembourg, by five of the t ...

. On 12 December 1995 the

Garmisch-Partenkirchen train collision The Garmisch-Partenkirchen train collision took place on 12 December 1995, when an ÖBB Regional-Express train traveling from Innsbruck to Munich departed from Garmisch-Partenkirchen Station in Bavaria despite a red light due to distraction, coll ...

at the station, when a departing RegioExpress train smashed into an arriving touristic train after passing a signal at danger, injuring 41 and killing one. On 3 June 2022 the

Garmisch-Partenkirchen train derailment On 3 June 2022, a double decker regional train derailed north of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, near on the Munich–Garmisch-Partenkirchen railway in southern Germany. Five people died and 68 passengers were injured, 16 of them seriously. Derailmen ...

happened to the north of the station when several carriages of a departing regio train derailed, killing five people and injuring 68 others.

Description

The station lies between the two districts of Garmisch in the west and Partenkirchen in the east. The railway yards are located at Garmisch area. The

Partnach The Partnach is an mountain river in Bavaria, Germany. It rises at a height of on the Zugspitze Massif. The Partnach is fed by meltwaters from the Schneeferner glacier some higher up. The glacier's meltwaters seep into the karsty bedrock an ...

flows between the station and Partenkirchen. The station area is bordered to the east by Bahnhofstraße and to the west by Weitfelderstraße and Olympiastraße. Sankt-Martin-Straße passes through an underpass under the station area. The entrance building was modernised and renovated in the late 1990s and it is located on the eastern side of the railway facilities towards Partenkirchen. Its address is 31 Bahnhofstraße. In addition to the home platform, there are two more platforms. Behind it there are five tracks for train parking and freight operations. The platforms are covered and accessible via lifts and stairways. The platform roofs were renewed from October 2009 to January 2011 and the platforms were fitted with

tactile paving Tactile paving (also called tenji blocks, truncated domes, detectable warnings, tactile tiles, tactile ground surface indicators, tactile walking surface indicators, or detectable warning surfaces) is a system of textured ground surface indicat ...

. The station building includes shops and a ticket office. It is served by the public bus network.

Rail services

Garmisch-Partenkirchen is served by four pairs of

Intercity-Express The Intercity Express (commonly known as ICE ()) is a system of high-speed trains predominantly running in Germany. It also serves some destinations in Austria, Denmark (ceased in 2017 but planned to resume in 2022), France, Belgium, Switzerl ...

services on Saturday and Sunday (mostly seasonal) operated by Deutsche Bahn as well as Regionalbahn and peak

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 ...

services operated by DB Regio between Munich and Garmisch-Partenkirchen. The Regionalbahn services run every two hours to/from Seefeld in Tirol and every four hours to/from Innsbruck, Reutte. Trains run to/from Reutte every hour on weekdays. Most of the trains from Munich are divided in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, with one part going to Mittenwald or Innsbruck and the other to Reutte. Similarly the trains from Mittenwald or Innsbruck are mostly coupled in Garmisch-Partenkirchen with trains from Reutte before proceeding to Munich. The following local buses (operated by the municipal utility) and regional bus lines (Oberbayernbus) as well as the long-distance FlixBus stop at or near the station:

Bavarian Zugspitze Mountain Railway

Triebwagen 16 der Bayerischen Zugspitzbahn

In the immediate neighbourhood, the

Bavarian Zugspitze Railway The Bavarian Zugspitze Railway (german: Bayerische Zugspitzbahn) is one of four rack railways still working in Germany, along with the Wendelstein Railway, the Drachenfels Railway and the Stuttgart Rack Railway. The metre gauge line runs from Ga ...

(''Bayerische Zugspitzbahn'', BZB) has operated since 1929 a separate terminal station, called Garmisch station. Unofficially, it is sometimes called Zugspitze station (''Zugspitzbahnhof''). Since a restoration, it consists of only one track (without a number) with platforms on both sides, a siding at the entrance to the station and an entrance building at the end of the track.

References

{{reflist Railway stations in Garmisch-Partenkirchen Station Buildings and structures in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (district) Railway stations in Germany opened in 1889 1889 establishments in Bavaria