Neanderthal station

Neanderthal station is a Rhine-Ruhr S-Bahn station in the town of Mettmann in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It was opened on 15 September 1879. It is located in the Neandertal (Neander valley), which prior to the German spelling reform of 1901 was spelled as Neanderthal. As Neanderthal man, which was originally found in the area, and the nearby Neanderthal Museum have continued to be spelled in the old way, the spelling of the station is unchanged.HistoryOn 15 September 1879 the Rhenish Railway Company opened the last section of its Düsseldorf-Derendorf–Dortmund Süd railway, locally known as the Wuppertaler Nordbahn (Wuppertal Northern Railway), from Mettmann station (now Mettmann Stadtwald station) to the Rhenish Railway’s Düsseldorf station.Along with this line Neanderthal station was also put into operation and the station building was inaugurated. This still exists today, but is no longer used for its original purpose. In the 1980s the whole station area and the station building were purchased by the landscape gardener Richard Bödeker and rebuilt as a residence. The history of the railway was considered in the design of the gardens and parks around the station and the grounds are filled with old artifacts of the railway history along the course of old Nordbahn as well as hundreds of species of bamboo and elaborately designed wall coatings and ground coverings.