Wien Hbf and through vs terminus stations

[The exile]

I think a slightly better alternative to Berlin Hbf would have been to tunnel four extra tracks east-west tracks with stations at Zoo, Lehrter Bahnhof Tief (Hbf site) and Alexanderplatz. This would have given trains in the new tunnels stops at the old western and eastern town centres, which lots of the U bahn lines serve. Not sure how to serve the north-south s bahn- you could shift the Lehrter Bhf station to Friedrichstrasse, but there might not have been space. I think this scheme would have cost more and needed some trains to run into the tunnels via very indirect approaches.

No “might” about it - there would not have been Space- and by going East - West you would have chucked away the opportunities presented by a wide strip of land suddenly becoming available through the middle of a major capital city.

 

[Austriantrain]

Apologies - late to reply.

I had failed to notice the Oswaldschleife. It's a slow speed single line curve used 4 times an hour: looking at Meidling p7-8 times:
- 11:38 - from Budapest depart towards Wien Westbahnhof
- 11:51 - arrive from Wien Westbahnhof towards Poland
- 12:08 - from Poland depart towards Wien Westbahnhof
- 12:21 - arrive from Wien Westbahnhof towards Budapest

The next hour is currently free, as both sets of services are two hourly. However, I've seen Bratislava EC paths occupying the other hour to one of these sets of paths, but those Bratislava ECs seem to have been pulled from the 2026 timetable.

The curve towards Penzing is also single line. For a route with 2 single line sections, 4tph isn't a low utilisation. And if I were a resident of the west side of Vienna I'd be pretty miffed if 4 of the level crossing down times per hour were because of empty trains.

Vienna has been lucky it happens to have such a level of redundant infrastructure that can accommodate this kind of 'unplanned' elaborate terminating moves involving a 40-minute run in, 2 hour turnaround, and 40-minute run out. In an HS2 context, you definitely wouldn't be building such infrastructure as new.

Well, there have been a few decisions to ensure that the available infrastructure will also stay available in the future: plans to completely redevelop Westbahnhof and Penzing sites and shrink the available space for the railway have been put on hold, and ideas to not rebuild the Oswald Schleife after the exit from Meidling was doubled and single-track the bridge of the „Verbindungsbahn“ over the Südbahn thankfully were discarded.

The suffering of people in the Viennese 13. district because of level-crossing is about to end though, because plans to rebuild the line have now been approved in Court and works will start this year. Ironically despite the crossings that part of Vienna is one of the most sought-after to live and one of the most expensive, and residents have fought rebuilding the line tooth and nail (while I don’t think the project as it is is good value, I am rather impressed that nobody caved in to the NIMBY pressure - made easier by the fact that this part of Vienna does not tend to vote for the ruling Social-Democrats of course).

BTW, the EC trains from Slovakia have been delayed, apparently because a lacking Slovak stock, but should start sometimes during this year.

 

[Gottfried]

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[route101]

I took the Warsaw to Vienna PKP service last week and it was handy staying on the train to Westbahnhof as my hotel was there.

 

[Gottfried]

Well, there have been a few decisions to ensure that the available infrastructure will also stay available in the future: plans to completely redevelop Westbahnhof and Penzing sites and shrink the available space for the railway have been put on hold, and ideas to not rebuild the Oswald Schleife after the exit from Meidling was doubled and single-track the bridge of the „Verbindungsbahn“ over the Südbahn thankfully were discarded.

The suffering of people in the Viennese 13. district because of level-crossing is about to end though, because plans to rebuild the line have now been approved in Court and works will start this year. Ironically despite the crossings that part of Vienna is one of the most sought-after to live and one of the most expensive, and residents have fought rebuilding the line tooth and nail (while I don’t think the project as it is is good value, I am rather impressed that nobody caved in to the NIMBY pressure - made easier by the fact that this part of Vienna does not tend to vote for the ruling Social-Democrats of course).

BTW, the EC trains from Slovakia have been delayed, apparently because a lacking Slovak stock, but should start sometimes during this year.

 

[Beebman]

I was at the Westbahnhof today at around 15:45 and noticed an MAV train in one of the platforms which turned out to be the 16:00 EC112 to Nyiregyhaza via Wien HBF and Budapest Keleti hauled by Vectron 193 499 on hire from European Locomotive Leasing. As I had time to spare I took it to the HBF on a trundle through the leafy suburbs and along the Oswaldschleife which was very pleasant, especially as the a/c on the MAV coaches was working well on a very hot day in the Austrian capital.

 

[Gottfried]

I was at the Westbahnhof today at around 15:45 and noticed an MAV train in one of the platforms which turned out to be the 16:00 EC112 to Nyiregyhaza via Wien HBF and Budapest Keleti hauled by Vectron 193 499 on hire from European Locomotive Leasing. As I had time to spare I took it to the HBF on a trundle through the leafy suburbs and along the Oswaldschleife which was very pleasant, especially as the a/c on the MAV coaches was working well on a very hot day in the Austrian capital.

 

[Gottfried]

Except this isn't what's happening on the ground. Half of Budapest trains still originate/terminate at Vienna, and almost all Polish trains originate/terminate at Vienna.

I'm trying to work out the routing of the Westbahnhof - Hauptbahnhof moves.

As far as I can make out, Wien Hbf is *supposed* to be used as follows:

Platforms 11 and 12 - island for Pottendorfer - Stadlau direction (is it (still) the plan that Semmering long-distance trains will eventually be routed via the Pottendorfer line?)
Platforms 9 and 10 - island for Westbahn - airport direction
Platforms 7 and 8 - island for airport - Westbahn direction
Platforms 5 and 6 - island for Stadlau - Pottendorfer direction
Platforms 3 and 4 - Huetteldorf - Stadlau S bahn trains (one platform face per direction).

You can probably conceivably terminate Westbahn or Budapest direction services in platforms 8 and 9 as they are in the centre of the formation. Terminating anything from the Stadlau direction in particular (in platforms 4 or 9) would mean crossing the airport//Budapest lines. The network isn't actually set up for 'go through and terminate on the other side' movements.

If Openrailwaymap is accurate and I'm tracing paths correctly - for the Westbahnhof to Hbf move, you are on the S-bahn tracks then you have to cross a single ladder, pass Meidling on platform 5 (bang road) then cross onto the eastbound Westbahn-airport line east of Maidling, then switch to Hbf platform 11/12 to then go down the Arsenaltunnel to be on the correct side of the formation for Stadlau. From what I can gather these trains don't use platform 4 (this would be a conflict free route) at Wien Hbf as platform 4 would not be able to accommodate an intercity dwell in between the S bahns. This can't be what the infrastructure was designed to do and can't be sustainable in the long run when service frequencies ramp up. It was fine when the Polish services were a handful a day. They are now two-hourly, and what happens when they become hourly?

Wien Hbf relies on everything running through to work but I think that was a naive design assumption.

 

[Austriantrain]

Furthermore, I'd like to inform you, that the Arsenaltunnel no longer exists since the 1950ies,

I believe that the tunnel-like long diveunder on the Eastern side (so that trains towards Stadlau can reach the Laaer Ostbahn from platforms 9-12 without conflict, and S-Bahn services from platforms 3+4 towards Stadlau can do so conflict-free too) is called Arsenaltunnel by some. I don’t know if it’s official.

 

[Gottfried]

I believe that the tunnel-like long diveunder on the Eastern side (so that trains towards Stadlau can reach the Laaer Ostbahn from platforms 9-12 without conflict, and S-Bahn services from platforms 3+4 towards Stadlau can do so conflict-free too) is called Arsenaltunnel by some. I don’t know if it’s official.

 

[Transilien]

Keep the old Hamburger and Potsdammerplatz terminus stations for inter-city services, and use the Stadtbahn for east-west regionals only. Build a much smaller scalle Hbf Tief (Thameslink sized) for north-south regionals (or maybe a 4-platform station to accommodate a limited set of defined through ICE flows like Hamburg - Dresden). They wouldn't have run out of money for finishing S21. All academic now of course.

The problem is that you couldn’t ‘keep’ the old termini, they were gone. The termini didn’t make any sense because Berlin was split in two, that’s why we have the messy situation now. Termini are always better IMO for capital cities, with RER/Metro services bridging the gap.

 

[Gottfried]

I might have been exaggerating a bit, but they do take 42 minutes from Hbf to Westbahnhof (and the same in the opposite direction) with 2 hours layover in Westbahnhof. 12-14 minutes dwell at Hbf and 22 minutes between Meidling and Westbahnhof.

AFAIK the running to Westbahnhof is indeed new, there was an application to the regulator for it last year I think.

 

[Austriantrain]

Termini are always better IMO for capital cities, with RER/Metro services bridging the gap.

I must respectfully, but strongly disagree. Of course, what you say is true for London and Paris, if alone because you would never find a site for a station big enough without demolishing half the city centre. But mainly because the cities and thus demand there is so large that there would always be very little capacity left for through passengers anyway (and corelating to this, there is enough demand for trains bypassing the capital, at least in the case of Paris).

Not so for e.g. Berlin or Vienna. Berlin might feel enormous and has a large population, but economically, it is not the strongest and there is nothing much around it (look at the difficulties in attracting flight traffic). You need to bundle originating and through traffic, and if the through traffic needs to use the S-Bahn in between, you will lose a large percentage of it. Same in Vienna, and if it wants to have at least a half-decent chance at continuing as a Central Europa-*crossroads", it needs the central station. Even Spain decided to link the two main stations with a through standard gauge line, and while much of what the Spanish do railway-wise I find incomprehensible, this decision I cannot fault.

Note that this has nothing to do with the perennial terminus vs through station discussion. You can have a central station as a terminus or as a through station or (e.g. Zurich) as a combination of both.

 

[Mirjamsterdam]

I must respectfully, but strongly disagree. Of course, what you say is true for London and Paris, if alone because you would never find a site for a station big enough without demolishing half the city centre. But mainly because the cities and thus demand there is so large that there would always be very little capacity left for through passengers anyway (and corelating to this, there is enough demand for trains bypassing the capital, at least in the case of Paris).

Not so for e.g. Berlin or Vienna. Berlin might feel enormous and has a large population, but economically, it is not the strongest and there is nothing much around it (look at the difficulties in attracting flight traffic). You need to bundle originating and through traffic, and if the through traffic needs to use the S-Bahn in between, you will lose a large percentage of it. Same in Vienna, and if it wants to have at least a half-decent chance at continuing as a Central Europa-*crossroads", it needs the central station. Even Spain decided to link the two main stations with a through standard gauge line, and while much of what the Spanish do railway-wise I find incomprehensible, this decision I cannot fault.

Note that this has nothing to do with the perennial terminus vs through station discussion. You can have a central station as a terminus or as a through station or (e.g. Zurich) as a combination of both.

Indeed - most capital cities are not nearly as large as London or Paris, and can avoid inconveniencing through passengers (which, depending on their location, general layout of the rail network, etc., they may get quite a lot of!)

The hassle and stress of changing trains in Paris is probably indeed unavoidable, but not exactly something I'd like to see copied in capital cities that are not so large that they need multiple termini.

Whether the central station should be a terminus or a through station is indeed a different discussion and the answer to this question will differ on a case by case basis.

 

[NCT]

I must respectfully, but strongly disagree. Of course, what you say is true for London and Paris, if alone because you would never find a site for a station big enough without demolishing half the city centre. But mainly because the cities and thus demand there is so large that there would always be very little capacity left for through passengers anyway (and corelating to this, there is enough demand for trains bypassing the capital, at least in the case of Paris).

Not so for e.g. Berlin or Vienna. Berlin might feel enormous and has a large population, but economically, it is not the strongest and there is nothing much around it (look at the difficulties in attracting flight traffic). You need to bundle originating and through traffic, and if the through traffic needs to use the S-Bahn in between, you will lose a large percentage of it. Same in Vienna, and if it wants to have at least a half-decent chance at continuing as a Central Europa-*crossroads", it needs the central station. Even Spain decided to link the two main stations with a through standard gauge line, and while much of what the Spanish do railway-wise I find incomprehensible, this decision I cannot fault.

Note that this has nothing to do with the perennial terminus vs through station discussion. You can have a central station as a terminus or as a through station or (e.g. Zurich) as a combination of both.

I'm not convinced actual traffic patterns support your view of Berlin. ICEs from the west and south overwhelmingly terminate in Berlin. The first big place east of Berlin is Poznan and I doubt anyone other than hardened Interrailers travel through from Hanover or Frankfurt (the big one). You end up with inefficient operations with trains carting fresh air to turnaround at Rummelsburg or Gesundbrunnen.

From a passenger perspective, the best intercity boarding and alighting environment in Germany is Munich (temporary construction site situation notwithstanding). Having whole trains worth of passengers alighting and boarding within a small dwell at Berlin Hbf isn't pleasant, and the Stadtbahn is already running out of capacity.

Interchange patterns at Berlin Hbf are between intercity and regional trains, not between two inter-city trains. A smaller scale Hbf (and just one pair of mainline tunnels with Potsdammerplatz) enabling through running of regional trains would preserve virtually all required interchanges and the federal government wouldn't have run out of money for the S21.

I can see Vienna wanting to accommodate through trains as it genuinely has major destinations all sides generating non-trivial through traffic, particularly as Budapest has a London/Paris setup. The trouble is with Berlin, Prague and Vienna all being through stations, you end up with all of them operating inefficiently as they invariably have to handle some terminating services. Vienna also bears the brunt of services from other countries coming in late and domestic passengers having to suffer delays caused by something hundreds of km away.

 

[Austriantrain]

I'm not convinced actual traffic patterns support your view of Berlin. ICEs from the west and south overwhelmingly terminate in Berlin. The first big place east of Berlin is Poznan and I doubt anyone other than hardened Interrailers travel through from Hanover or Frankfurt (the big one). You end up with inefficient operations with trains carting fresh air to turnaround at Rummelsburg or Gesundbrunnen.

My point was not that Berlin needs through trains (although the Hamburg - Berlin - Prague line does appear very useful). It was that it needs a central mainline station, not several LD ones with the S-Bahn in between, as the original poster argued.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Jul 2026 ==

I can see Vienna wanting to accommodate through trains as it genuinely has major destinations all sides generating non-trivial through traffic, particularly as Budapest has a London/Paris setup. The trouble is with Berlin, Prague and Vienna all being through stations, you end up with all of them operating inefficiently as they invariably have to handle some terminating services. Vienna also bears the brunt of services from other countries coming in late and domestic passengers having to suffer delays caused by something hundreds of km away.

I don’t dispute that through trains, especially ones with very long journeys, have significant drawbacks. I just don’t think there is hard and fast rule that there should not be any; as always, there are trade-offs to be made. Although I do see your point made in a parallel thread that maybe they should not run through Germany… Prague - Copenhague might be a step to far… OTOH, Prague (Dresden) - Hamburg is not insignificant and neither is Berlin - Copenhague. BTW, I am not convinced about Berlin - Munich - Italy, as planned by Trenitalia, either. Munich is a good break-of-journey point, if alone because capacity requirements north and south of it are very different. And Berlin/Leipzig/Nürnberg will not be huge generators of through traffic.

Concerning Vienna, so many of our delays are home-made that the through trains are really not that big an issue. Although ÖBB does plan to separate the Budapest - Munich from the Vienna - Bregenz trains so as to reduce delays (and increase capacity).

 

[NCT]

My point was not that Berlin needs through trains (although the Hamburg - Berlin - Prague line does appear very useful). It was that it needs a central mainline station, not several LD ones with the S-Bahn in between, as the original poster argued.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Jul 2026 ==

Transilien's post just needs to be interpreted less literally, to include regional trains operating through, then I think his view stands. With a good network of through S bahn and regional trains, it's not critical that all intercity services are co-located - each set of inter-city terminals just needs good regional connections.

In Berlin's case you'd only really have 2 major intercity terminal clusters - one for the Hamburg and Hannover lines at the current Hbf site (or Lehrter and Hamburger stations) and one at Potsdammerplatz for the Erfurt and Dresden directions.

Yes it might mean that a terminal cluster doesn't get all the regional trains, but that's hardly new. As it happens Greater Berlin is more populous than the (rest of) the states around it. There's plenty of Greater Berlin that's not on a direct service to Hbf (if you are not on a Stadbahn service or the U5). If direct Hbf connectivity isn't critical for Greater Berlin itself it can't be that critical for Erkner.

I don’t dispute that through trains, especially ones with very long journeys, have significant drawbacks. I just don’t think there is hard and fast rule that there should not be any; as always, there are trade-offs to be made. Although I do see your point made in a parallel thread that maybe they should not run through Germany… Prague - Copenhague might be a step to far… OTOH, Prague (Dresden) - Hamburg is not insignificant and neither is Berlin - Copenhague. BTW, I am not convinced about Berlin - Munich - Italy, as planned by Trenitalia, either. Munich is a good break-of-journey point, if alone because capacity requirements north and south of it are very different. And Berlin/Leipzig/Nürnberg will not be huge generators of through traffic.

Concerning Vienna, so many of our delays are home-made that the through trains are really not that big an issue. Although ÖBB does plan to separate the Budapest - Munich from the Vienna - Bregenz trains so as to reduce delays (and increase capacity).

Until very recently it was the slow Hamburg path that operated through to Dresden, suggesting this pairing is operations driven rather than revenue driven.

Vienna happens to have vast railway lands/lines and the old Westbahnhof to play with so could build Hbf and the surrounding infrastructure relatively cheaply. In the context of application to the UK (especially HS2) - my original premise, not that you've been arguing this - this is clearly not the case in any of London, Birmingham, Manchester or Leeds. For through stations to work for HS2 services, you'd have to build dedicated tracks and Wien Westbahnhof / Berlin Rummelsberg equivlanents to accommodate terminating services.

 

[Austriantrain]

Transilien's post just needs to be interpreted less literally, to include regional trains operating through, then I think his view stands. With a good network of through S bahn and regional trains, it's not critical that all intercity services are co-located - each set of inter-city terminals just needs good regional connections.

In Berlin's case you'd only really have 2 major intercity terminal clusters - one for the Hamburg and Hannover lines at the current Hbf site (or Lehrter and Hamburger stations) and one at Potsdammerplatz for the Erfurt and Dresden directions.

As I said, I disagree. With the planned Warsaw - Poznan HSL and the general growth of the polish market, good connections between LD trains will further increase in relevance. Two termini very close to each other, but not linked, strikes me as an extremely expensive and inefficient way to operate a hub like Berlin. I believe it would have been a really terrible idea, and apparently so did the German planners. If anything, you could have built two back-to-back stations with a couple of through platforms, a bit like Chicago Union station (but with a much larger footprint than the existing).

Additionally, lines from Berlin to the rest of Germany are - compared to other parts of Germany - reasonably fast (with the exception of the Ruhr), and - being much less congested - more reliable too. Another reason to operate Berlin with one hub instead of artificially reducing rail‘s market potential for - at the best - slight operational advantages. Note that extensions to Gesundbrunnen and Südkreuz are more a feature than a bug, because it enables many more connections in the very sprawled out city that is Berlin, again increasing rails attractiveness.


== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 7 Jul 2026 ==

Vienna happens to have vast railway lands/lines and the old Westbahnhof to play with so could build Hbf and the surrounding infrastructure relatively cheaply. In the context of application to the UK (especially HS2) - my original premise, not that you've been arguing this - this is clearly not the case in any of London, Birmingham, Manchester or Leeds. For through stations to work for HS2 services, you'd have to build dedicated tracks and Wien Westbahnhof / Berlin Rummelsberg equivlanents to accommodate terminating services.

I would never argue it for London; Leeds would have a single station had HS2 been built (again, I am not arguing for a through station here, merely a central one).

As for Manchester and Birmingham, it is what it is. It does not make sense to tear apart historic cities to completely build a new rail network when the space is not there and the existing layout is decent (although I do believe not turning Curzon/Moor Street into a central LD station, with New Street as a local and regional station is a missed opportunity, but we have argued this before).

Berlin on the other hand had massive open and free space right in the centre, for known reasons.

 

[NCT]

As I said, I disagree. With the planned Warsaw - Poznan HSL and the general growth of the polish market, good connections between LD trains will further increase in relevance. Two termini very close to each other, but not linked, strikes me as an extremely expensive and inefficient way to operate a hub like Berlin. I believe it would have been a really terrible idea, and apparently so did the German planners. If anything, you could have built two back-to-back stations with a couple of through platforms, a bit like Chicago Union station (but with a much larger footprint than the existing).

Additionally, lines from Berlin to the rest of Germany are - compared to other parts of Germany - reasonably fast (with the exception of the Ruhr), and - being much less congested - more reliable too. Another reason to operate Berlin with one hub instead of artificially reducing rail‘s market potential for - at the best - slight operational advantages. Note that extensions to Gesundbrunnen and Südkreuz are more a feature than a bug, because it enables many more connections in the very sprawled out city that is Berlin, again increasing rails attractiveness.

Not slight operational advantages, but significant improvements in efficiency and robustness. Running nearly empty trains to the other side of the city is wasteful. Not having to run to Rummelsburg and back means savings in train sets and staff costs and more of the Stadbahn capacity used for useful regional trains or all-day Magdaburg ICs. Terminus platforms are cheap. They only have a throat at the country end where land use is usually industrial and the platforms can be built on the surface. They would be cheaper to build than Hbf low level and the 4-track tunnels through Potsdammerplatz. A massive underground footprint is still a footprint - it's just hidden by lots of money. As we now know German taxpayers are no more forthcoming than British ones. Short and fat terminal stations is better for avoiding severance than long and (slightly) thinner terminal ones - having one fewer throat makes a lot of difference. Cheaper operation means cheaper fares. Lower capital costs mean lower demands on the taxpayer.

I disagree that the network around Berlin is more reliable. The Hamburg, Leipzig and Dresden lines are all mixed traffic two-track railways, no better than Cologne - Hagen or Manchester - Crewe. The reliability of a node is a function of the services that feeds it. ICEs from Hanover come from the Rhine-Ruhr and Osnabruck - that guarantees the Stadtbahn will never be a reliable railway. That means Berlin will have to act as an operational breakpoint and any attempts to run Rhine/Ruhr or Amsterdam - Warsaw trains will end in tears. In fact increased frequencies towards Poland spells trouble. After Polish upgrades the natural frequency will be 2tph Berlin - Warsaw and 2tph Berlin - Krakow. There's not enough capacity on the Stadtbahn for all 4tph to terminate at Charlottenburg. I wouldn't be surprised that those services will one day have to start at Ostbahnhof.

 

[The exile]

Transilien's post just needs to be interpreted less literally, to include regional trains operating through, then I think his view stands. With a good network of through S bahn and regional trains, it's not critical that all intercity services are co-located - each set of inter-city terminals just needs good regional connections.

In Berlin's case you'd only really have 2 major intercity terminal clusters - one for the Hamburg and Hannover lines at the current Hbf site (or Lehrter and Hamburger stations) and one at Potsdamer Platz for the Erfurt and Dresden directions.

With pretty poor connections between them.
Are there any examples post-war of the possibility of a single station being ignored and two new termini being deliberately built apart from each other by the same operator?

 

[NCT]

Towards Leipzig the unconstrained service pattern should be something like 6tph ICE plus 4tph regionals (2tph Frankfurt Sprinters, 2tph Munich Sprinters, 2tph semi-fast to Leipzig) and 4tph regional Ludwigsfelde and Luckenwalde). Dresdnerbahn needs at least 8 (2 Prague, 2 regionals first stop Blankenfelde, 4 FLX). In the future the Stammbahn will want to send at least 4. That's 20tph of which 8 are long-distance requiring generous dwells at Hbf. 4 platforms in each direction at Hbf low level suddenly appears tight. I think it can be accommodated, but performance will be challenging with all the through running.

The Berlin Hbf project was clearly too expensive as otherwise S21 wouldn't be so delayed. As it happens the S1/S2 corridors don't have direct access to Hbf. If for the same money that's already been spent they built cheap low-risk terminus stations at Hamburger / Lerter bahnhofs and Potsdammerplatz (still leaving plenty of land for regeneration), a Thamesink-sized north-south tunnel for mainline regional trains and a simple S21, the S1/S2 corridors would have had direct access to (virtually) all inter-city trains by now.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 7 Jul 2026 ==

With pretty poor connections between them.

How?

Are there any examples post-war of the possibility of a single station being ignored and two new termini being deliberately built apart from each other by the same operator?

Not so much new, but conscious decisions not to pursue single-station set-ups - Amsterdam and The Hague.

Also I see no attempt at moving Milan S trains from Garibaldi to Centrale.

 

[The exile]

How?

Not much in terms of north - south regional (but non S-Bahn) flows to provide those connections.

Whatever was done, there would still have been a need to get trains out to Rummelsburg or Schoeneweide, as there would have been no chance of getting any servicing / stabling facilities in the bright shining new bits of central Berlin.

In terms of pressure of passenger numbers (and convenience) the big mistake was dropping the IC/E stops at Zoo - apparently to increase the footfall at all Hbf’s shops

Not so much new, but conscious decisions not to pursue single-station set-ups - Amsterdam and The Hague.

Also I see no attempt at moving Milan S trains from Garibaldi to Centrale

Nothing like the same situation.

 

[NCT]

Not much in terms of north - south regional (but non S-Bahn) flows to provide those connections.

Sorry, I'm not following. Would you mind expanding a bit further?

Whatever was done, there would still have been a need to get trains out to Rummelsburg or Schoeneweide, as there would have been no chance of getting any servicing / stabling facilities in the bright shining new bits of central Berlin.

No the whole point of having terminus platforms is to have turnaround activities within the station like done in the UK. We are talking about places in Berlin where there is actually ample land for those 'obvious' reasons, as opposed to through Tiergarten where you need to go underneath.

[/QUOTE]In terms of pressure of passenger numbers (and convenience) the big mistake was dropping the IC/E stops at Zoo - apparently to increase the footfall at all Hbf’s shops

Sounds like conspiratorial nonsense. The Zoo's 4 platforms cannot cope with inter-city dwells. The West Berlin stop (or Berlin's Old Oak Common) is Spandau. Spandau has more capacity because traffic towards Wannsee has peeled off by then.

 

[Austriantrain]

Not slight operational advantages, but significant improvements in efficiency and robustness. Running nearly empty trains to the other side of the city is wasteful. Not having to run to Rummelsburg and back means savings in train sets and staff costs and more of the Stadbahn capacity used for useful regional trains or all-day Magdaburg ICs. Terminus platforms are cheap. They only have a throat at the country end where land use is usually industrial and the platforms can be built on the surface. They would be cheaper to build than Hbf low level and the 4-track tunnels through Potsdammerplatz. A massive underground footprint is still a footprint - it's just hidden by lots of money. As we now know German taxpayers are no more forthcoming than British ones. Short and fat terminal stations is better for avoiding severance than long and (slightly) thinner terminal ones - having one fewer throat makes a lot of difference. Cheaper operation means cheaper fares. Lower capital costs mean lower demands on the taxpayer.

You could try and do that. The resulting operation shambles would negate each and every cost saving you could expect.

I agree with you that what you propose can be done. On a purpose built new or completely rebuilt network. You would need separate LD tracks everywhere that is at least a bit congested and probably at major stations separate platform tracks for every LD line. Even if the will and the money was there to do it in Germany, that would take 50+ years. You can’t build a station infrastructure that will only work in half a century.

Even if the German network was not the shambles it currently is, a train going through the Karlsruhe/Stuttgart/Mannheim - Frankfurt - Fulda corridor or the Ruhr is like threading through New Street and then the Castlefield corridor and then all over again.

So you need adequate delay recovery time at your destination. After many hours of journey time with huge passenger churn, you also need to clean the train thoroughly, restock, maybe add water and clear the toilet tanks.


45 minutes as a turnaround time is cutting it extremely fine, 60-75 minutes is more like it. EDIT: Westbahn at Wien Westbahnhof with its simple operation and simple fleet usually plans with a turnaround of 46 minutes. That is usually fine, except if a train from/through Germany gets lost there. Occasional short tournarounds at 16 minutes are risky, even though their timekeeping is generally very good.

But unlike Westbahn in Vienna, in Berlin you can’t do a „first in first out“. Not every LD line uses the same stock and you have a significant amount of foreign stock too, which you can’t just send to Norddeich Mole because the timetable fits well.

So either instead of having 10 platform faces, you need to build 14 or 16, or you have a depot right next to the station like at historic termini - bit you would never build that in a new station in the city centre - or you would need all those empty runs to a depot further out anyway.

At a point where so many ICE trains end, some trains will also invariably get taken out of service and go for servicing.

Ironically, the only way to avoid most of this is to do what you refuse to: run all trains as through trains - in and out of the terminal in 5 minutes - and doing all of the above at some far flung station where you have the space and capacity.

EDIT (last one) to summarise: I believe the Berlin LD hub is very well thought through and efficient - a good central station and enough capacity at Gesundbrunnen, Südkreuz, Ostbahnhof and to a limited degree Charlottenburg - where land is a bit less at a premium - to turn trains around. The Berlin hub ist most certainly not the reason for DB‘s operation problems, and it should be future-proof enough. The hub function will only increase with improvements of services to Poland. I consider it vastly better than what was done in Vienna, which is really a central station done on the cheap.

I disagree that the network around Berlin is more reliable. The Hamburg, Leipzig and Dresden lines are all mixed traffic two-track railways, no better than Cologne - Hagen or Manchester - Crewe. The reliability of a node is a function of the services that feeds it. ICEs from Hanover come from the Rhine-Ruhr and Osnabruck - that guarantees the Stadtbahn will never be a reliable railway. That means Berlin will have to act as an operational breakpoint and any attempts to run Rhine/Ruhr or Amsterdam - Warsaw trains will end in tears. In fact increased frequencies towards Poland spells trouble. After Polish upgrades the natural frequency will be 2tph Berlin - Warsaw and 2tph Berlin - Krakow. There's not enough capacity on the Stadtbahn for all 4tph to terminate at Charlottenburg. I wouldn't be surprised that those services will one day have to start at Ostbahnhof.

Indeed, in light of the above, I have to correct my statement. If the German network operated reasonably well, lines like Prague - Hamburg and Munich - Berlin should be reliable, but everything coming from Frankfurt or the Ruhr will remain risky.

 

[NCT]

You could try and do that. The resulting operation shambles would negate each and every cost saving you could expect.

I agree with you that what you propose can be done. On a purpose built new or completely rebuilt network. You would need separate LD tracks everywhere that is at least a bit congested and probably at major stations separate platform tracks for every LD line. Even if the will and the money was there to do it in Germany, that would take 50+ years. You can’t build a station infrastructure that will only work in half a century.

Even if the German network was not the shambles it currently is, a train going through the Karlsruhe/Stuttgart/Mannheim - Frankfurt - Fulda corridor or the Ruhr is like threading through New Street and then the Castlefield corridor and then all over again.

So you need adequate delay recovery time at your destination. After many hours of journey time with huge passenger churn, you also need to clean the train thoroughly, restock, maybe add water and clear the toilet tanks.


45 minutes as a turnaround time is cutting it extremely fine, 60-75 minutes is more like it. EDIT: Westbahn at Wien Westbahnhof with its simple operation and simple fleet usually plans with a turnaround of 46 minutes. That is usually fine, except if a train from/through Germany gets lost there. Occasional short tournarounds at 16 minutes are risky, even though their timekeeping is generally very good.

But unlike Westbahn in Vienna, in Berlin you can’t do a „first in first out“. Not every LD line uses the same stock and you have a significant amount of foreign stock too, which you can’t just send to Norddeich Mole because the timetable fits well.

So either instead of having 10 platform faces, you need to build 14 or 16, or you have a depot right next to the station like at historic termini - bit you would never build that in a new station in the city centre - or you would need all those empty runs to a depot further out anyway.

At a point where so many ICE trains end, some trains will also invariably get taken out of service and go for servicing.

Ironically, the only way to avoid most of this is to do what you refuse to: run all trains as through trains - in and out of the terminal in 5 minutes - and doing all of the above at some far flung station where you have the space and capacity.

EDIT (last one) to summarise: I believe the Berlin LD hub is very well thought through and efficient - a good central station and enough capacity at Gesundbrunnen, Südkreuz, Ostbahnhof and to a limited degree Charlottenburg - where land is a bit less at a premium - to turn trains around. The Berlin hub ist most certainly not the reason for DB‘s operation problems, and it should be future-proof enough. The hub function will only increase with improvements of services to Poland. I consider it vastly better than what was done in Vienna, which is really a central station done on the cheap.

Indeed, in light of the above, I have to correct my statement. If the German network operated reasonably well, lines like Prague - Hamburg and Munich - Berlin should be reliable, but everything coming from Frankfurt or the Ruhr will remain risky.

If I understand it correctly, you have shifted your argument from 'lines operating into Berlin perform well so Berlin should be a through node' to 'lines operating into Berlin don't perform well and as a terminating node they should continue the old school continental practice of turning around in depots'.

I don't agree the old school turnaround practice is necessary or desirable, and I think you are exaggerating the baseline somewhat. Also, if your premise that 10-hour long intercity services will inevitably run (very) late and this can only be mitigated by very extensive turnarounds at depots, then that's a hardly a good way of running a railway.

Given that most railway journeys are a length where the train is competitive against both the car and the plane, the core operational practices of the railway should be aimed at the 2-4hr journey segment, so we shouldn't really be running 10-hour long inter-city services. As I opined in my observation thread, services like Basel/Stuttgart - Cologne - Hamburg should be broken up in Cologne so Cologne - Hamburg passengers can enjoy on-time and prepped trains. As for first-in-first-out - DB is actually coming round to my way of thinking - it's standardising inter-city services to consistent all-day patterns so each service has dedicated rolling stock diagrams in perfect rotation - this supports the first-in-first-out operating model and reasonably short turnaround times.

Looking at a sample of core inter-city services to Berlin

- Cologne - Berlin - 4.5 hours
- Dusseldorf - Berlin - 4.5 hours
- Amsterdam - Berlin - 6 hours
- Frankfurt - Berlin - 4 hours
- Munich - Berlin - 4 hours

There are longer services (like Basel - Berlin) that operate at lower frequencies.

The majority of Berlin intercity services are just at the longer end of British ones. If the standard British practice (in a stylised way) is 2 hours on half an hour off, then for Berlin 4 hours on 1 hour off would be perfectly reasonable, if not still generous. DB is currently willing to tolerate a 6-minute Frankfurt reversal in the middle of a 10-hour run, so anything longer than 6 minutes at the end of a 5-hour run is infinitely better than current practices.

If in an enlightened future scenario significant high-speed lines are built between Rhine/Ruhr and Hanover achieving ~3-hour Cologne/Dusseldorf - Berlin journey times and passenger demand increases to justify 2tph each, you can accommodate the increased service level by having 2 turnarounds per platform per hour (~25-minute turnarounds as planned for Euston for HS2).

So you don't need depots for daytime train servicing. You just need them for overnight stabling (and maintenance obviously). Depots are not an issue. Currently things from the west go through to Rummelsburg and things from the east go through to Grunewald (I think this is right - happy to be corrected if not). You just swap it around.

What is built is built. I think Berlin Hbf will work OK in most instances. However, by my calculation the Stadbahn is running out of capacity and will not be able to accommodate growth from both Rhine/Ruhr/Netherlands and Poland directions. Something will have to give like Polish trains originating/ending at Ostbahnhof. This is also leaving the elephant in the room that Lichtenberg's (currently) diesel services are destined to never run into Central Berlin.

The problem with Berlin Hbf is it’s unfinished, because of fiscal pressures and buildability. The currently realised railway outputs could have been achieved in equivalent ways cheaper by exploiting surface options and reducing underground construction, and S21 would have then been delivered within the financial envelope already spent.



== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 11 Jul 2026 ==

Are there any examples post-war of the possibility of a single station being ignored and two new termini being deliberately built apart from each other by the same operator?

From the Stuttgart-31 thread: Firenze Belfiore. Deliberately creating a remote second station for one particular service group where currently everything converges at S.M.N.

 

[43096]

What is built is built. I think Berlin Hbf will work OK in most instances. However, by my calculation the Stadbahn is running out of capacity and will not be able to accommodate growth from both Rhine/Ruhr/Netherlands and Poland directions. Something will have to give like Polish trains originating/ending at Ostbahnhof.

But if you terminate Poland trains at Berlin Ost, where do you send them? If the current method of operation persists, then it has to be Charlottenburg/Grunewald: so you might as well continue to terminate them at Hbf.

 

[NCT]

But if you terminate Poland trains at Berlin Ost, where do you send them? If the current method of operation persists, then it has to be Charlottenburg/Grunewald: so you might as well continue to terminate them at Hbf.

Actually, If you terminate Poland trains at Berlin Ostbahnhof, you can send them also to Rummelsberg. This is probably the most capacity efficient operation.

Berlin Ostbahnhof has 5 platforms which isn't overly generous. The number of regional services and all the long-distance services terminating from the west will likely need more than one platform per direction. This would leave one centre platform (Track 3) that could theoretically be used for in-platform turnaround but one platform clearly wouldn't be enough.

 

[43096]

Actually, If you terminate Poland trains at Berlin Ostbahnhof, you can send them also to Rummelsberg. This is probably the most capacity efficient operation.

Berlin Ostbahnhof has 5 platforms which isn't overly generous. The number of regional services and all the long-distance services terminating from the west will likely need more than one platform per direction. This would leave one centre platform (Track 3) that could theoretically be used for in-platform turnaround but one platform clearly wouldn't be enough.

You are aware that the current method of operation for the Poland trains is non-push-pull locomotive-hauled stock? Going back out to Rummelsburg is a capacity-eating move in the current operational environment.

 

[The exile]

From the Stuttgart-31 thread: Firenze Belfiore. Deliberately creating a remote second station for one particular service group where currently everything converges at S.M.N.

How many new terminus stations are being created - precisely 0. Unless I have completely misunderstood the situation, Belfiore is to be a through station, not a terminus. I assume that because of the location to SMN it was impossible (or ludicrously expensive) to route the new line in tunnel under SMN to create a true interchange - which would, of course, have been the best option.
What they are most definitely not doing is what you were saying should have happened in Berlin (if I understood you correctly) - namely to ignore the fact that the removal of the Wall created a unique strip of land right through the middle of a capital city which simplified the construction of a tunnel at (effectively) right angles to an existing cross-city line and provided land for a brand-new large-scale interchange station, and instead to build two brand new termini within spitting distance of that existing cross-city line and force almost everyone to change trains twice.

 

[NCT]

You are aware that the current method of operation for the Poland trains is non-push-pull locomotive-hauled stock? Going back out to Rummelsburg is a capacity-eating move in the current operational environment.

The context here is the HSR era where Poland runs 300km/h EMUs into Germany.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Jul 2026 ==

How many new terminus stations are being created - precisely 0. Unless I have completely misunderstood the situation, Belfiore is to be a through station, not a terminus. I assume that because of the location to SMN it was impossible (or ludicrously expensive) to route the new line in tunnel under SMN to create a true interchange - which would, of course, have been the best option.
What they are most definitely not doing is what you were saying should have happened in Berlin (if I understood you correctly) - namely to ignore the fact that the removal of the Wall created a unique strip of land right through the middle of a capital city which simplified the construction of a tunnel at (effectively) right angles to an existing cross-city line and provided land for a brand-new large-scale interchange station, and instead to build two brand new termini within spitting distance of that existing cross-city line and force almost everyone to change trains twice.

Through / terminus doesn't matter. Single vs different stations does.

What's happening in Florence breaks the connections between high-speed and regional services.

What I'm proposing for Berlin maintains the vast majority of regional connection to all inter-city trains (all north-south regional traffic would hit my alternative Hbf complex and Potsdammerplatz) and have delivered S21 early.