Blankenburg station

Blankenburg station is the most important station in Blankenburg in the Saxony-Anhalt district of Harz in central Germany.LocationThe station lies in the north of the town. Whilst this simplified its accessibility from Halberstadt to the north, it made a railway route into the Harz Mountains very costly.HistoryBlankenburg station was opened on 31 March 1873 by the Halberstadt-Blankenburg Railway Company (Halberstadt-Blankenburger Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft or HBE). In its early years trains only ran to the station from Halberstadt. The main purpose of the line was to provide a connexion for the Blankenburg smelting works to the railway network.On 3 July 1875 a 3.5 kilometre long line from Blankenburg station to the smelting works in the west of the town was completed. It was known as the Erzstufen Railway and was a cog railway using the Abt rack system. It was the oldest industrial siding in the Harz. But it was closed again in 1885 because, from 1880, the Blankenburg–Tanne line, also built by the HBE, provided a better link to the factory. For topographical reasons the line had to leave Blankenburg station in a northwesterly direction, thus resulting in a railway terminus. This line became the Harz Railway (Harzbahn) and since 1950 has been called the Rübeland Railway (Rübelandbahn).