Aarau train station

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Aarau
Inside the station (2010)
Inside the station (2010)
Data
Location in the network Connecting station
Platform tracks 7 (SBB) + 3 (WSB)
abbreviation AA
IBNR 8502113
opening June 9, 1856
Profile on SBB.ch No. 2113
Architectural data
architect A. Beckh, JF Wanner
location
City / municipality Aarau
Canton Aargau
Country Switzerland
Coordinates 646 243  /  249132 coordinates: 47 ° 23 '29 "  N , 8 ° 3' 4"  O ; CH1903:  six hundred and forty-six thousand two hundred and forty-three  /  249132
Height ( SO ) 383  m
Railway lines
List of train stations in Switzerland
i16

The Aarau station is a railway station in the Swiss town of Aarau in the canton of Aargau . It is a through station for SBB trains in domestic traffic. On the south side of the facility there is a separate station for the narrow-gauge trains of the Wynental and Suhrentalbahn .

history

The first station, which was opened together with the Aarau – Olten line on June 9, 1856 by the Swiss Central Railway (SCB), was not located in the area of ​​today's station on Bahnhofstrasse , but to the west of it in Schachen, as the Aarau city tunnel ( 466 m) only went into operation on May 1, 1858. This first station was just a very simple wooden structure and was probably a combined goods shed with a waiting room (the sources are rather imprecise). This was canceled without replacement after the tunnel and the new provisional train station went into operation.

View of the train station in 1870

Since the new station building was not yet completed when the city tunnel was opened on May 1, 1858 and the Swiss Northeast Railway (NOB) opened the Brugg –Aarau line 14 days later , a temporary station building was necessary. It was a goods shed designed by Jakob Friedrich Wanner , in which the necessary rooms for passenger traffic and administration were integrated.

Accident 1899

On June 4, 1899, the night express drove Zurich - Geneva of Nordostbahn than the prescribed holding point and joined into two stationary locomotives of the Central Railway. The accident left two dead and three seriously injured.

First station building (1859)

Aerial photo from 150 m by Walter Mittelholzer (1919)

On April 10, 1856, the NOB commissioned the general secretary Schweizer and the chief engineer A. Beckh to design the interior. A. Beckh and Jakob Friedrich Wanner worked out the plans and sent them to the SCB management for approval on April 24, 1857. The Aargau government finally approved the plans on May 30, 1857. In the same summer, construction of the building on the north side of the tracks could begin. There was a delay in the entrance hall, as Beckh's project was only in its final form at the end of December. The NOB director sent Wanner abroad to get offers for the entrance hall from various companies on behalf of Beckh. The initially planned bell tower on the central building was left out, the proposal came from the NOB on March 10, 1859 and was approved by the SCB. The reception building was opened on October 1, 1859.

It was the second large station building after the one in Romanshorn that the NOB went into operation. It was a three-part building with a high central wing and two not directly attached, almost as high side wings. The entrance was designed in the form of a round arcade. The vestibule was open to the city. The entrance hall was free-standing and connected to the reception building by a covered corridor. The garage was demolished in 1924 because it was in the way of electrifying the route.

Towards the end of 1909 the building was rebuilt. Between the side wings, floors were raised and the open counter hall relocated to the interior of the building. The building was demolished in spring 2008.

New building (2008-2010)

The Aarau station clock has one of the largest dials in Europe

In February 2008, the Aargau voters supported the construction of the new station. In the summer of 2008, the station building was dismantled and a completely new building was built in its place. The new station has been in operation since the beginning of August 2010. In the third basement, an exhibition room was set up that explains the history of the Meyer's tunnels and offers two new entrances to this secretly built water pipe system.

The costs for the construction totaled around 114 million CHF and it offers 18,500 square meters of usable space.

The clock face of the station clock erected in the course of the new building has a diameter of nine meters. It is therefore larger than the clock face of St. Peter's Church in Zurich (8.46 m) and the clock tower of the Palace of Westminster in London (7.01 m), which houses Big Ben . The clock in Cergy-Saint-Christophe train station near Paris (10 m) is even bigger . The Aarau dial is the second largest in Europe.

Track system and routes

Regio in Aarau station
SBB train in Aarau station
Platform 0 in Aarau station

The first to reach the station on May 1, 1858, was the SCB line to Olten. On May 15, 1858, the actual landlady, the NOB, was able to open its route to Brugg. In 1874 the first section of the Aargau Southern Railway from Rupperswil via Lenzburg to Wohlen was put into operation. On September 6, 1877, the Swiss National Railway opened the Aarau – Suhr line . The Suhrentalbahn reached the station on November 19, 1901, and the Wynentalbahn reached the station square on February 22, 1906, after having ended in the provisional Gais station on March 5, 1904.

The Aarau – Turgi line has been open to two lanes since 1862, the Aarau – Olten line since July 16, 1874 and the (Aarau–) Rupperswil – Lenzburg line since February 7, 1947. In the 1990s, a second double track was created between Aarau and Rupperswil, making four tracks available. To the west, the four-lane ends in the Aarauer Schachen shortly after the city tunnel.

While the two meter-gauge lines were operated electrically from the start, the standard-gauge lines were electrified as follows:

  • January 25, 1925 Zurich –Olten (via Brugg)
  • 0May 5, 1927 Rupperswil– Rotkreuz (Südbahn)
  • August 15, 1946 Aarau– Zofingen (via Suhr)

The two-lane city tunnel received a counterpart in the 1990s when a second two-lane tunnel tube was built. Then the old tunnel from 1857 was renewed and adapted to today's conditions. Today, the east-west trains usually run through the new tunnel to the south, while the west-east trains use the old tunnel. The standard gauge line Aarau-Suhr has been closed, it is required for the laying of the WSB line. With the closure, the short track 7 also became superfluous and was dismantled when construction work began on re-routing the WSB.

The track systems consist of six through tracks (tracks 1–6). There are also two head tracks on the east side of the station building, of which only track 0 is used for public traffic. On the south side of the railway system there was a short head track 7, also facing east, until 2005. Both head tracks are accessed via the adjacent outer platform of the through-track, which is designed as a central platform in the area. Tracks 1 and 6 have an outside platform while tracks 2 + 3 and 4 + 5 are each located on a common central platform. The two central blocks are connected on the west side via the tunnel portals via an outside staircase. Two underpasses run under the tracks, the eastern one also providing access to the WSB station.

In the direction of Zurich on the northern side of the main line is the Aarau freight station, which is home to a Hupac AG container transshipment terminal . The signal box is also located there. However, this is remotely controlled from the Olten train station .

Passenger numbers and timetable (SBB)

Around 65,000 passengers use the station every day. The following lines serve Aarau:

Long-distance transport

Aargau S-Bahn

Zurich S-Bahn

City and regional transport

WSB train leaves Aarau station

The city bus lines of the Aarau bus company (BBA) and the post bus lines to Frick and Laufenburg operated by the Swiss Post are connected with stops at the train station . The Wynental and Suhrentalbahn (WSB) has its own station building, which is on the southern side of the track field. It is separated by the Hintere Bahnhofstrasse. The station was opened in 1924 when the Wynentalbahn , which ran to Menziken , moved its terminus from Bahnhofplatz here. Since the opening of the tunnel to Entfelderstrasse in 1967, the Aarau-Schöftland Railway has also ended here. Both railways merged on January 1, 1957 and are now part of the Aargau Verkehr company .

literature

  • Michael Hanak (et al.): Aarau train station - Chronicle of an architectural monument . Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-85881-338-1 .
  • Werner Stutz: Railway stations in Switzerland. From the beginning to the First World War . Orell Füssli, Zurich 1983, ISBN 3-280-01405-0 , p. 112 and 142.

Web links

Commons : Bahnhof Aarau  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Beck p. 112.
  2. ↑ Report of the Federal Council to the Federal Assembly on the pardon request of Heinrich Metzger, who was convicted of negligent railroad endangerment, former locomotive driver of the Swiss Nordostbahn, in Seebach near Zurich. (PDF, 0.4 MB) In: Swiss Federal Gazette. June 21, 1902, p. 885 , accessed October 20, 2013 .
  3. ↑ Beck p. 142.
  4. ↑ The most modern train station in Switzerland is inaugurated. Swiss Federal Railways, accessed on July 8, 2011 .
  5. ↑ Aarau: Yes, enables new construction at the train station. Retrieved July 8, 2011 .