Potsdam Pirschheide station

Geschichte

Potsdam Pirschheide station is a station on the Berlin outer ring. It was opened in 1958 as Potsdam Süd (south) station and was called Potsdam Hauptbahnhof (main station) from 1961 to 1993. In this period it was the most important station on the outer ring after Berlin Schönefeld Flughafen station.Although the station is far from the centre of Potsdam on the Pirschheide (Pirsch heath) to the southwest of the town, in its heyday as the main station it had substantial passenger traffic and often reached its capacity limit. With the reunification, however, the station rapidly lost importance and was almost completely closed except for a single platform in the lower part of the station. It is classified by Deutsche Bahn as a category 6 station.HistoryAs a result of the four-power status of the former capital of Germany and the deepening division of Berlin and Germany, the operation of railway traffic in and around West Berlin became complicated for Deutsche Reichsbahn (DR), which now operated railways in East Germany (GDR). To solve this problem, it was planned to build a bypass that would connect the northwest, west and southwest of the Berlin region to the reorganised capital of the GDR, East Berlin, bypassing West Berlin. By 1954, large parts of the new outer ring were completed and on 30 September 1956, the last section of the ring between Golm and Saarmund, including the crossing of the Templiner See (lake), on the outskirts of Potsdam was taken into operation.