Wien Südbahnhof
Wien Südbahnhof (German for Vienna South Station) was Vienna's largest railway terminus. It closed in December 2009 and was demolished in 2010 to be replaced with a new station, Wien Hauptbahnhof. It was located in Favoriten, in the south-east of the city. The East-bound rail services of Südbahnhof remained in operation until 2012 at a temporary train station "Südbahnhof (Ostbahn)".[1][needs update]
History
Predecessors
The earliest antecedents of the modern Südbahnhof were the Gloggnitzer Bahnhof, the start of the
Divided eastward and southward section
In the course of industrialisation, the need for rail transportation grew, and the Austrian railways passed from private hands into government control. The old Raaber Bahnhof was replaced between 1867 and 1870 by the Centralbahnhof ("central station"), designed by A. Schumann, then in 1910 by the Staatsbahnhof ("State station") and in 1914, the Ostbahnhof ("eastern station").
The Gloggnitzer Bahnhof was also re-built to a design by Wilhelm von Flattich in 1874 (too late for the
Two railway lines were planned, extending from Vienna to the south and east: one to Wiener Neustadt and Gloggnitz, and one via Bruck an der Leitha to Győr (German: Raab), with an extension to Uj-Szöny (now a suburb of Komárom) and a branch line to Pozsony (German: Preßburg, now Bratislava). This last branch line was, however, never realised.
Initially, the Hungarian lines carried more freight, and were thought to be the more valuable, with plans being proposed to extend the line to Croatia and the Austro-Hungarian port of Trieste. The route to Gloggnitz was stifled by competition from the canal between Vienna and Wiener Neustadt, but benefited from passenger transport to tourist destinations such as Mödling, Gumpoldskirchen, Baden and Bad Vöslau, making it the first Austrian railway to target passenger traffic directly.
According to Matthias Schönerer, who was involved in every major Austrian railway project at the time, rather than a single station, it would be most sensible to build two termini at an
The passenger station was built in a classical style, as was usual for public buildings around 1840. The entrance and exit were through the front of the building, which faced the location of the modern Schweizergarten, the station being considerably closer to Südtiroler Platz then than it is now.
The entrance hall was connected to the concourse on the first floor (AmE: second floor) by a staircase. The concourse was the first in Austria, comprised four platforms, large bow windows and was covered by a sturdy 23-metre wide construction of wooden beams held together by iron bands. A house between the two stations served as a restaurant, and was the only building to survive the re-building works on the following 110 years, although the two stations later received separate culinary facilities.
During the
As far back as the time of the Gloggnitzer Bahn, the railway southwards from Vienna was the busiest in the area. It was nationalised in 1924, although the properties remained in the hands of the Donau-Save-Adria-Eisenbahn AG until Anschluß in 1938. In contrast to other Viennese stations, the Südbahnhof was relatively undamaged by the Second World War; a small number of bombs fell on it, and a great deal of glass was broken in the fighting in April 1945. The steel framework was largely undamaged and services were soon restarted, although it became clear that renovation works would be necessary.
The modern building
Following the war, no reason could be found not to unite the two earlier railway stations into a single building. In particular, both railways had come into the ownership of the same company, the
The interior of the Südbahnhof comprised a large hall with small shops and ticket counters around the edges. Platforms 11–18 (equivalent to the old Ostbahn) were one level higher, and platforms 1–9 (equivalent to the old Südbahn) were two levels above the main hall.
The front of the Südbahnhof was served by tram lines O and 18. The side entrance on Schweizergartenstraße was served by tram line D and bus 13A. The nearest access to the U-Bahn network was a few hundred metres to the west, at Südtiroler Platz.
Closing and the future
The railway station was closed down December 13, 2009 and the building was torn down in 2010 to be replaced with housing and commercial estate.[2] A new main railway station, Wien Hauptbahnhof, was constructed with the main entrance moved further east to Südtiroler Platz to facilitate interconnection with public transport. The new station opened partially on 9 December 2012 and was fully operational in 2015. The former S-Bahn platforms at Südbahnhof were renamed Quartier Belvedere.
References
Notes
- ^ "Vienna Central Station: Construction Site and Changes in Public Transport".
- ^ In Brief Railway Age February 2010 page 5
Bibliography
- Kaiser, Wolfgang (2011). Die Wiener Bahnhöfe. Geschichte, Gegenwart und Zukunft [Vienna's Railway Stations: Past, Present and Future] (in German). München: GeraMond. OCLC 724801367.
External links
- "Plans of the 1874 Südbahnhof" (in German). Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.
- "Der neue Hauptbahnhof" (PDF) (in German). ÖBB. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-12-14.
- Wien-Südbahnhof: Photogallery and documentation about the Vienna Southern Railway Station (Wien-Südbahnhof) by Martin Frey and Philipp Graf