Hamburg Berliner Bahnhof

The Berliner Bahnhof in the German city of Hamburg was the western terminus of the Berlin-Hamburg railway opened in 1846. It was previously the site of the station built in 1844 to a design by Alexis de Chateauneuf for the Hamburg-Bergedorf Railway. Berliner Bahnhof was completed in 1857 and closed in 1903.Structural featuresThe former Bergedorfer Bahnhof was extended for the needs of the Berlin-Hamburg railway using red brick with plastered cornices and provided with a 148-meter-long and 23.5 m-high wooden train shed with four tracks. This train shed was considered at the time to be the most substantial wooden structure in Germany. The station building was divided into departure and arrival areas with a baggage check-in and check-out and waiting rooms of different classes. It also had a ladies room.The commissioning took place on 15 December 1846, but the renovation and construction of the 173 m-long building complex, the freight tracks and the roundhouse were not completed until 1857. The station had two high towers for an optical telegraph connection, but since an effective electrical telegraph had already been invented, they were purely decorative. The entrance building also had two turntables for locomotives. These were detached from the train and turned on the turntables so that they could pull the train in the opposite direction. The station precincts, which included a freight yard and a semi-circular engine shed, were about three times as long as the station.