Through station
A through station is a station that, in contrast to the terminus station , allows rail traffic from two directions. Despite its sometimes problematic integration into the infrastructure of the associated city, this design is the more practicable, since the corresponding track field with the switches can be less extensive. In addition, the permitted speeds before the entrance can be higher; at a terminus station they have to be reduced significantly for safety reasons. In some cases, existing terminal stations were therefore converted into through stations.
Through stations, where the station building is in the middle of the track system, are called island stations . The first through station in a major German city was Hanover Central Station , which opened in 1879 .
Since 1991, long-distance traffic in Kassel has been handled via the newly expanded through station Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe instead of the terminus called “ Hauptbahnhof ” .
A clear example is also Berlin , where during the division of Berlin all terminal stations around the city center were closed, while those along an east-west axis were already connected to each other by the Berlin Stadtbahn , which opened in 1882, and converted into through stations; After German reunification , this connection was supplemented by a north-south connection tunneling under the zoo . At the crossing point, the main station was put into operation.
Larger construction projects in which a terminus station is converted into a through station or replaced by it are the Vienna Central Station and Stuttgart 21 projects . Examples of a combined terminus station with through tracks are the Dresden and Zurich main stations. Until 2013, Salzburg's main train station also had head tracks, which have been converted into through tracks since 2009. The through station with the most tracks in Europe is Nuremberg Central Station .