Dülmen station

Geschichte

Dülmen station is one of two operating tower stations in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is located in Dülmen in western Münsterland. It is at the crossing of the Wanne-Eickel–Hamburg and the Dortmund–Enschede railways.HistoryThe Cologne-Minden Railway Company (Cöln-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft, CME) received a concession on 28 May 1866 to build a railway from Wanne to Osnabrück. This would be part of the inter-regional Hamburg–Venlo railway, which in turn would be part of an international Paris–Hamburg railway. On 1 January 1870, the CME started passenger operations on the first section between Wanne station (now Wanne-Eickel Central Station (Hauptbahnhof)) on its trunk line and Münster station (now Münster (Westfalen) Hauptbahnhof) and it opened the first Dülmen station at the same time.Germany and the Netherlands agreed on 13 November 1874 to establish a direct rail link between Enschede and Dortmund. The Dortmund-Gronau-Enschede Railway Company (Dortmund-Gronau-Enscheder Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft, DGE) was established for this purpose and the first section was opened to Lünen station (now Lünen Nord) already on 25 November 1874. Dülmen DGE station was opened half a kilometre northwest of the Cologne-Minden station on 15 June 1875 and a grade-separated crossing was created during the building of the next section of the DGE to Dülmen. On 1 August 1875, the line was extended to the Coesfeld (Westf) station. After the nationalisation of the (nominally) private railway companies and their absorption by the Prussian state railways, Dülmen DGE station was renamed Dülmen Ost (east) station, although it was just west of the Cologne-Minden station.