Hagenow Land station

Hagenow Land station is a railway junction in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which was opened on 15 October 1846. It is located about 2.5 kilometres from the centre of the small town of Hagenow. It is classified by Deutsche Bahn as a category 5 station.The suffix Land in the official station designation indicates, on the one hand, that its location is outside of Hagenow town and is used, on the other, to distinguish it from the station that is situated in the centre of Hagenow; this station is named Hagenow Stadt (town)—until 2010 it was called just Hagenow. It is connected to Hagenow Land by a 3.5 km-long branch line.HistoryThe fact that the Berlin-Hamburg railway ever made a 20 km detour via the comparatively small town of Hagenow, which then had 3400 inhabitants, resulted from the negotiations of the five states of Prussia, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Denmark, Lübeck and Hamburg on the construction of the line. The Mecklenburg side under Grand Duke Frederick Francis II undertook in a treaty agreed on 8 November 1841 to subscribe half of the share capital and was able to achieve a route that ran close to the Mecklenburg residence in Schwerin. Hagenow station was provided for the connection with Schwerin (and later with Rostock and Wismar). Original plans foresaw a railway station close to the town. Finally, however, the committee in charge of establishing favourable grades recorded "that a line from Berlin Grabow, Ludwigslust touching Hagenow and Boitzenburg but running at a distance of 5/8 mile on the right and 1/3 mile on the left is preferable to any other line" (note the German mile was 7,532.5 metres long).