Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Ghost Stations

(Disclaimer: Joking aside, I fully understand the risks/dangers involved in these adventures and do so in the full knowledge of what could happen. I don't encourage or condone and I accept no responsibility for anyone else following in my footsteps. Under UK law, trespass without force is a civil offence. I never break into a place, I never photograph a place that is currently occupied, as this would be morally wrong and intrusive, I never take any items and I never cause any damage, as such no criminal offences have been committed in the making of this blog. I will not disclose location or means of entryI leave the building as I find it and only enter to take photographs for my own pleasure and to document the building.


On a large, global scale I think it can be generally agreed on that we all got pretty lucky with that Cold War malarky, what with the world narrowly avoiding nuclear war and all that. On a closer, more personal scale, peoples lives with impacted and the repercussions can still be seen to this day if one knows where to look. Generally on this blog, with a few notable exceptions, I try to keep the locations vague. Sadly it's difficult to do that when abandoned things are often the consequences of an entire country, and a city within it, being torn in half. I'm referring to Germany, of course.

One thing the Germans do efficiently is run their public transport on time, and for a reasonable price, in complete contrast to the UK where we spent an extortionate amount on inferior performance. However, if you want to catch a train from this station, you're in for a long, long wait. In addition to that, even getting to the elevated station platform is a bit of a scramble. The traditional human ways have been long closed off.


The station owes its existence to a company that was founded in 1847, producing electrical telegraphs and later electric tramways. This company became an industrial behemoth, having offices in thirteen countries before the founder died in 1892. In 1897 they then purchased around 200 hectares of uninhabited land and created a mini metropolis of sorts, consisting of factories for their products and also residential accomodation for their employees.

But by 1914 they had around 23,850 employees, and not all of them lived nearby. As such the company began prioritising facilitating their daily commute, funding the train service on which they would travel to work.
Initially a tramway was constructed in 1905, consisting of six carriages and running about 65 times an hour, but even that couldn't keep up with demand as the employer number skyrocketed, and so the company proposed the construction of this train line.


Of course, the first world war had slowed down progress considerably but with the nearby factories employee numbers now exceeding 55,000, the line was becoming a neccesity. The elevated platform was constructed in 1927, and the first trains started picking up passengers from the station in 1929. It was an instant hit, with trains full of passengers rolling in both directions every five minutes.


To see the platform as it is now, it's sad to imagine it once full of life, with dozens of people waiting for their train, and just going about their daily business.


There's an office here, and it contains a few bits and pieces.


This is an old fuse box. Back in the day fuses commonly screwed into these circular holders, in much the same way one screws in a lightbulb.


Now obviously a raised platform station high above the city was going to have stairs down to ground level, but these ground level access points have long since been bricked up. My hope was to find one that did give me access to the lower floors.



These stairs lead down to this boarded up entrance. Some tenacious person has actually ripped one of the panels down only to find that the entrance is barred as well as boarded. Whoever sealed up the inner station really wanted to make sure nobody ever got in.



 There's a little waiting room here, although if one was to enter in order to wait for their train in shelter, they would be disappointed. The ceiling here is long gone.


Written on the brickwork at the back it says "Message to my dad: Burn Motherfucker" underneath a giant angry head that looks sort of like an orange Dr Phil, but a bit more evil.
I wonder if Dr Phils kids are urban explorers...

Anyway, back in the day, this room would have had a few seats along the side and along the back wall. Allegedly the stations along this line were decorated each with their own unique colours, this one being blue, although these tiles are the only remnant of that, barely remaining under layers of graffiti. 



During World War 2, the company that funded these stations played an important role, although the factories were occasionally bombed, and sometimes workers were killed. By this point they also utilised force labour, as was the Nazi way, but thats another story. As for this station and the train service, it was restricted somewhat when the bridge over the river just down the tracks from here was completely destroyed by allied bombing in1943.

Allegedly as of 1944, the Russians, British and American powers had already met and discussed how they would divide Germany in the event of their victory, but nevertheless with the surrender of the Nazis in May 1945, the Soviet troops were initially the sole occupying force in Berlin. The British and American forces wouldn't arrive until July, and the Soviets decided to use the opportunity. They very kindly repaired that bridge over the river, at least temporarily with a rickety wooden stand-in. But this seemingly kind act was one of self service, as they utilised the train line to plunder West Berlin of machinery, weapons, and whole chunks of railway track, until the British, American and later French forces arrived two months later. 


This stairway down, much to my delight, had an open door at the bottom.


However it just led to this really small continuance of the stairway,and another bricked up wall. It's worth noting that the two stairways face each other, which would indicate that they led to the same place once.


The train service resumed from September 1945, and even became electrified in 1951, and the rickety Russian bridge was replaced in 1953. They still had to replace all the rails that the Russians had taken, and so the line wasn't fully restored until 1956.
But there were looming complications.

It seems that in 1945 there actually wasn't as much animosity between the American, British and Russian forces. At least, nothing in comparison to what was to come in the following decades. During their initial discussions about how to divide Berlin, it was agreed that the Soviet-ran East German railway company would continue running trains through western sectors for the sake of convenience. This line, and the stations along it, were part of those controlled by the East German railway company in spite of them being in West Berlin.

Speaking of other stations, I actually ran into a group of German kids who attempted to banter with me as I clumsily slipped under a fence that crossed the tracks. They soon stopped when they realised that I couldn't understand what they were saying, but they knew sufficient English to tell me that another station did exist further down the tracks, and they were friendly enough to be apologetic for the language gap. I wasn't having any of that. I'm the stranger in their land, after all. And besides, I told them, English people from England can't even speak English. Just look at any debate about Brexit on the internet!

I fucking love the internet. It's an endless source of entertainment, and centuries from now historians will need an English to Idiot dictionary just to understand what the fuck half the people on it are talking about.


Walking to the next station was like taking a leisurely stroll through the woods. Nature is reclaiming all of this, and it was really quite nice. The sun was starting to set though, and I was rather hoping to see what I could while I still had sunlight.

Finally I emerged at the second station.


 So regarding the Soviet control of these West Berlin stations, as you can imagine as the Cold War tensions escalated, this all became a little bit of a legal mess. The borders were becoming more and more defined, and a small strike in 1949 was a taste of things to come. But quite simply, Soviet East Germany had a foot in the door of Capitalist West Berlin, and they weren't keen to budge straight away.

The continuance of the East German state railway running trains through West Berlin is a historic curiosity but at the time it was more of an annoyance. This annoyance turned to anger in 1961 when the Berlin Wall went up. For those who don't know their basic geography, Germany and Berlin were both divided into East and West, with East being taken by the Russians. But the entirety of Berlin was in East Germany, meaning West Berlin was a little island of American, French and British control surrounded by the soviets. With the boundaries solidified by a literal wall, the East German state railway was running trains around West Berlin but the passengers weren't allowed to go anywhere on them except West Berlin. They couldn't even catch the train further west, out of west Berlin into East Germany. Families and friendships were divided by the iron curtain, and the West Berlin populace were wondering, why the fuck are we still paying East Germany for this railway service?

People consequentially began boycotting the train services that were run by the East, unhappy that their money was going into the Russians pockets, and waving banners and slogans reading stuff like "The passenger is paying for the barbed wire," albeit in German. It must have been glorious. I love seeing the people stand up to authority, especially when that authority has done little to earn respect.


Hanging there above the platform is a rusty old sign that still marks this as "Platform 2."


Capitalising on the boycott, West Berlin began running a bus service along the old train routes, the western powers no doubt loving every minute of humiliating the Russians. East Germany lost something like 140 million deutsche marks running mostly empty trains through West Berlin.
Far from the crowds of hundreds who once flooded these platforms, 1976 saw an average of 67 people using the train each day. That sounds like bliss too, getting on an empty carriage after a long day at work.

East Berlin was getting desperate, and tried to make up their losses by selling or leasing their lines to the West Berlin senate. However the Western powers were having too much fun watching the Russians toss their money into a black hole, and politely refused. Eventually the East German state railway had no choice but to reduce the services in 1980. Those who worked on the railways were not happy at having their hours reduced and went on strike. At this point, the East German railway company said "Fuck it," and closed the line and the stations permanently.
They were probably grateful to have an excuse to do so.

The platforms and train lines remain as you see them now in these pictures, giving way to nature and gradually crumbling away. They have a protected status which means they can't be torn down or developed into houses, but the fact that an underground line opened before the train seats even stopped being warm (those seats still being sat on by the minority passengers anyway), it doesn't seem like there's even any need to ever reopen the line. Talks have been had but as of yet nothing has come of it.


Here we have the waiting room of this station, in considerably better condition than the last one. It has a roof, seats and no angry orange Dr Phil effigy. As stated earlier, the stations had their own individual colours, and this one was red.




As with the other platform this one also had stairs leading down the stations street-level interior.


And as with the other, this is also blocked. Again, properly bricked up. Whoever closed off the lower station really wanted to make sure nobody got down there.


I wish I'd gotten a close up of the little rings that hang from the ceiling. There's one in the background of this shot. It would have once housed a clock, but this has since been removed, either by decay or vandalism. Given that the stations have been abandoned for nearly forty years I would be very surprised if I had found them still there.



Much to my delight this stairway still has some of the original overhead signage, albeit masked with graffiti. There's a crest there, and beneath it are the words "Nächste Filiale: Quellweg 10."

Fortunately, I got positively giddy as I looked down these stairs. At the bottom of these stairs, someone had bashed down the brickwork, and given me entrance into the station interior!


We're in!
And if you look closely, you can see the handrail actually protruding through the brickwork. They didn't even remove it when they decided to brick it up, choosing instead to lay the bricks around it. Interestingly the metal plate was put over the hole on the inside, meaning that upon realising that the brickwork had fallen, someone came in through the interior of the station to patch it up. Then at a later date someone had come and broken it down.

I was hoping for vintage posters to still adorn the walls, or perhaps old time tables, or ticket dispensers. After all, if this has been bricked up then the interior could be a perfectly preserved time capsule of 1980s Berlin.

Alas, I was disappointed on that front.


From the main entrance, facing the stairs this is pretty much all that there is, but it's surreal to think that in its heyday this stairway would have hundreds of people ascending and descending on their journeys to work. The main entrance is barricaded too. Somewhere a supermarket is missing a trolley. One wonders how long that's been here for. There are toilets down here, too. Those are always the best parts of any abandoned premises.


Still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.


There was also this stairway in what I can only assume was some sort of staff-only utility or storage section. It led to a featureless attic.


But even the windows here have been bricked up.

It certainly is interesting to see just how tenacious they were with keeping people out. Effort was once put i to these places, but now they simply are being left to rot. It's also sad to imagine the stations once thriving with thousands of passengers, breathing life into this place, and then having them all slowly dwindle in the aftermath of poor decisions.
It's interesting, I think, because as I said at the start, we regard the Cold War on a large scale perspective. The world was at risk of nuclear armageddon, but it never happened. What a relief.
But meanwhile, an entire city was chopped in half. On a personal scale, lives were affected, and the scars are still there. Families were torn apart, friends were separated, businesses collapsed, and this is all still in living memory for many people. The Berlin Wall only came down in 1991. It really puts things into perspective.

In Germany one gets a much more intimate look at the Cold War. It's a very different viewpoint to the bunkers that I see in the UK.

Speaking of which, my next blog post will be on the Shropshire one, and it's also railway related. Then I'm posting on this one again. In the meantime, help the blog out by sharing it, and don't forget to follow my Instagram, like my Facebook and follow my Twitter.

Thanks for reading!

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