Wattenscheid station

Geschichte

Wattenscheid station is on the Witten/Dortmund–Oberhausen/Duisburg railway. It is one of two stations in the formerly independent city of Wattenscheid, now a district of the city of Bochum in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The other station is Wattenscheid-Höntrop. In late 2007, Wattenscheid station was downgraded to a Haltepunkt (literally “halt”, meaning that it is not a rail junction and has no sets of points). It is located just south of central Wattenscheid, next to the A 40 autobahn on the western edge of an industrial area.HistoryA station named Wattenscheid has been at this location since 1874. It was on a line of the Bergisch-Märkische Railway Company (Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft, BME), which was nationalised in 1882. The current station building dates from 1956. The station at that time had more than ten tracks and was one of two rail terminals of the Fröhliche Morgensonne mine. A few hundred metres to the west lies the "Wf" interlocking, which was built in 1957. The freight tracks were dismantled with the closure of the mine.A passing loop without a platform running towards Dortmund was removed in early 2006 and a passing loop running towards Essen were removed at the end of 2007, leaving Wattenscheid station with only two tracks around a central platform. With the new 2007/2008 timetable the tracks were renumbered, with the remaining tracks 3 and 4 now renumbered as tracks 1 and 2. Since the two bridges east of the station were built for the outer tracks the platform length was reduced from 310 metres to 250 metres and it was widened so that the tracks could use the outer alignments.