Karlsruhe Hauptbahnhof

Hbf intro|Karlsruhe is the central railway station in the German city of Karlsruhe. The station is classified as one of the major Category 1 stations in Germany, due to its function as a hub connecting several railway lines with each other.

History

The first station was built about 500 metres south of the Karlsruhe market square, together with the Mannheim to Basel line. The station had two platforms and opened in 1843. The station at first was built using 1600 mm gauge tracks, but soon the gauge was changed to the more common 1435 mm. Lines were added to Maxau, Pforzheim, Heilbronn and Leopoldshafen after the conversion.As the lines were all laid down on street level, and traffic increased over the years, the old station was soon found impractical. A new station was therefore erected approximately one kilometre south of the old station, and opened in October 1913.The station saw little damage in World War II and was extensively modernised in the early 1990s when the Karlsruhe model tram-train system was implemented. Today, it sees about 150 long-distance passenger trains per day.

External links

*de icon [http://www.bahnhof.de/site/bahnhoefe/de/sued/karlsruhe__hbf/karlsruhe__hbf.html DB station information]