Priestewitz station

Priestewitz station is on the Leipzig–Dresden railway and the Großenhain–Priestewitz railway, which branches off it. The station is in the town of Priestewitz in the German state of Saxony.HistoryPriestewitz station was opened on 9 April 1839 during the construction of the first German long-distance railway, the Leipzig–Dresden railway. It was established because it was near to the major towns of Meissen and Großenhain, which both received direct rail connections about two decades later.After the opening of the line, a shed used during its construction was used as a freight receiving facility and waggon depot. The town of Großenhain built a guesthouse at its own expense, which was used for the handling of passengers. The station building itself consisted of a small wooden platform hall for passengers, a barn-like freight shed, an open hall for the reloading the freight onto waggons and a blacksmith for the repair of waggons. There was a "cistern" for the supply of water to locomotives.Priestewitz benefited from the railway, so the town quickly experienced an economic boom. Even before 1860, a new building was built for handling ticket sales, baggage and freight. It replaced the first station buildings from 1839, which no longer coped with the increasing volume of traffic.The town of Großenhain was very interested in having its own connection to the rail network. Therefore, some citizens of Großenhain established the Großenhain Branch Railway Company (Zweig-Eisenbahngesellschaft zu Großenhain) to build a connection to the Leipzig–Dresden railway. The Großenhain–Priestewitz railway was opened on 14 October 1862. In 1870, the line was continued by the Cottbus-Großenhain Railway Company to Cottbus as the Großenhain–Cottbus railway. Thus Priestewitz had become a railway junction.