Weißenfels station


Weißenfels station is the station of Weißenfels in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It lies at the junction of the Halle–Bebra and the Weißenfels–Zeitz railways.

Location

The station is located at line-kilometre 32.0 of the Halle–Bebra railway. In addition, it is the starting point of a line to Zeitz.
It lies some distance north of the town centre and near the bank of the Saale. It borders the streets of Am Güterbahnhof and Bahnhofstraße. The line crossed state road 206 at the western end of the station.
Großkorbetha station is located about eight kilometres further northeast. Five kilometres to the southwest lies the halt of Leißling. The next stop on the branch line to Zeitz is at the halt of Weissenfels West, which is almost four kilometres away and is further from the town centre than Weissenfels station.

History

On 6 June 1846, Weissenfels station was opened on the Halle–Bebra railway, which already had two tracks. Weißenfels was the terminus of the line until it was extended to Weimar on 1 April 1847. The line to Bebra was completed in 1849.
Plans dating from 1845 provided for the construction of the entrance building to the south near the Saale. This would have been the place where the second building, which still exists, stands. There was also a platform with two adjacent tracks. A coke shed was built in the western station area. A track plan from 1857 indicates the existence of over 30 sets of points. Furthermore, there was already a carriage shed, a roundhouse, a turntable, a water supply point and a toilet.
Initially freight traffic was dominated by lignite.
At the Merseburger Straße level crossing there was a mechanical full barrier system with four barrier arms.
The line to Zeitz was opened on 9 February 1859. This turned Weißenfels into a junction station. This involved a major reconstruction of the track infrastructure.
Another reconstruction of the track infrastructure probably took place towards the end of the 1860s. New freight and loading tracks were added. The construction of a second entrance building also began. A third track from the Zeitz direction ran into the station. It ended as two dead-end tracks south of the existing platforms. The platform was also extended to accommodate the trains running from Zeitz.
Renovation of the underpass and the construction of a new platform on tracks 1 and 2 began in the 2010s, which was completed in 2013 at a cost of about €755,000. The northern platform with tracks 3 and 4 had already been modernised.
A bus station, which improved the connections between buses and rail should, was built In 2011/12.

Infrastructure

Platforms and tracks

Currently the station has the following platforms:
NumberPlatform heightUsable length
155 cm174 m
255 cm174 m
376 cm323 m
476 cm323 m

Entrance building

The entrance building is heritage listed.
The city of Weißenfels bought the entrance building from Deutsche Bahn in 2016.
The facade was restored for Sachsen-Anhalt-Tag in 2010. The municipality of Weißenfels continues to campaign for funding from the Revita program of the state of Saxony-Anhalt for an extensive refurbishment of the building.
It is currently largely unused. A local club is considering opening a museum of Weissenfels railway history in it.

Signal boxes

Before the commissioning of the electronic interlocking the following signal boxes had been built:
DesignationFunctionClass
WbDispatcher
WmGuard boxS&H 1912
WoDispatcherS&H 1912
WrIGuard boxS&H 1912
WrIIGuard boxS&H 1912
WvGuard boxS&H 1912
WwGuard boxS&H 1912

When the signal boxes were decommissioned on 12 December 1999, a Siemens electronic interlocking went into operation on the same day, which is remotely controlled by an operations centre in Leipzig.

Rail services

According to an article in the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung published in 2013, more than 3000 passengers use the station daily.

Long distance services

Weißenfels is served by various long-distance services. However, the only trains that stop are relief trains or trains stopping early or late in the day. The remaining long-distance trains pass through the station without stopping. It has been affected by the significant reduction of long-distance traffic on the section between Erfurt and Halle/Leipzig on the Halle–Bebra railway following the opening of the Erfurt–Leipzig/Halle high-speed railway in December 2015.
In the 2017 timetable, the following long-distance service stops in Weißenfels:
In the past, trains stopped on the following routes:
Until 2001, Weißenfels was served by InterRegio services, which took a similar route. Until 1998, it was still served by D-Zug services.

Regional services

Currently, Weißenfels station is served by the following regional services:
LineRouteOperatorInterval
RE 16Halle – Merseburg – Weißenfels – Naumburg – Bad Kösen – Apolda – Weimar – Erfurt120Abellio
RE 18Halle – Merseburg – Weißenfels – Naumburg – Bad Kösen – Jena Paradies – Jena-Göschwitz120DB Regio Südost
RE 42Leipzig – Weißenfels – Naumburg – Jena Paradies – Saalfeld – Lichtenfels – Bamberg – Nuremberg120DB Regio Bayern
RB 20Leipzig Hbf – Bad Dürrenberg – Weißenfels – Naumburg – Apolda – Weimar – Erfurt – Neudietendorf – Gotha – Eisenach60Abellio
RB 25Halle – Merseburg – Weißenfels – Naumburg – Jena Paradies – Saalfeld60Abellio
RB 76Weißenfels – Teuchern – Deuben – Zeitz60
120 		DB Regio Südost