Göhrde station

The three-storey station building comprises a centre section with a gable frontage, and two wings, one and a half storeys high, with gables at the ends. It was built in brick with timber framing. Its wooden carvings were intended to give it the appearance of a hunting lodge. The offices are in the centre of the building. The west wing was reserved for VIPs, and there were two waiting rooms in the east wing. One waiting room was available to all travellers, while the other could be reserved in order to avoid having to mix with ordinary people. On the first floor of the centre section was a flat for the stationmaster and on the second floor were two flats for the signalmen. Other station staff lived in the neighbouring village of Pommoissel.

West of the station building stood a small shed for handling express goods. East of the station building were three outbuildings: a toilet, a wash house and a stable.

The station building was modified several times over the course of the years, the first being in 1909. The attic of the east wing was partially upgraded to take 3 bedrooms. After 1918 the whole building could be used for railway operations or by the railway staff. In 1925/26 a 2+1⁄2-room flat was built for a gang foreman (Rottenführer, a Rotte was a gang of track workers) in the west wing, which in imperial times had been reserved exclusively for VIPs, and cellars were built under half the area of the wing. The public waiting room was converted in 1935 into a station restaurant and the reservable waiting room into the restaurant kitchen. A small beer cellar was established underneath. The usable area of the offices in the central section was halved and used as living quarters (Wohnraum) and a club room (Klubzimmer). In the wings, the dormer windows facing the tracks were replaced by bay windows, the open balcony on the street side was closed in by windows and all the chimney tops were replaced.

The fourth modification took place in 1967 during the Deutsche Bundesbahn era and had the widest reaching consequences for the architectural style of the building. The preservation of the old structure took a back seat in favour of a simple functional design. This was most visible in the roof, where the slates were replaced by corrugated asbestos sheets and the dormers on the forecourt side removed. The doors to the balcony on the first floor were replaced by a single-casement window and the conservatories on the second floor were removed, all bar their support frames. Originally the balconies were to have been completely torn down, but for structural reasons that would have taken a great deal of work and so this did not happen on grounds of cost. The two-piece transom windows (Sprossenfenster) on the first floor were almost all replaced by simple single-casement windows.

At the end of 1983, the Göhrde Station Child and Youth Centre began restoration work on the station building and remaining outbuildings. The work was financially supported by the state of Lower Saxony and the Federal Government and, largely under their own initiative, carried out by workshop projects for unemployed people or by interested individuals.

The first phase saw the west wing being restored. The attic was converted into a living and sleeping area for twelve people. On the forecourt and track sides two double-raftered dormers were built and the timber-framed facade and the rooms in the centre section were restored. In the centre section, the balconies were rebuilt and were given copies of the original doors based on an original blueprint. All the windows on the first floor were replaced in order to recreate its former appearance and chimney pots of the original design were added.

The old offices on the ground floor were restored to their original dimensions, the station restaurant was renovated and the roof was recovered with slates again.

The present-day halt is located immediately west of the old station building. On the former home platform stands a wooden passenger shelter and a timetable poster. Passenger trains stop at what used to be platform 2 and is now platform 1. The platform has a usable length of 142 metres.[12] The halt can be accessed on foot without the use of steps, but the poorly surfaced platform is too low to enable entry to the coaches at the same height.[13] There is a smoking ban at the halt as at all other Deutsche Bahn stations and stops. A small smoking area with a sign at the end of the unmetalled footpath that leads from the approach road alongside private land to the halt, makes the point clear.

Opposite the station building there used to be a goods shed and a loading ramp designed for both side- and end-loading. On the loading ramp were cattle pens for loading cattle. Both facilities were located at the end of a loading road, which could be accessed via a level crossing at the western end of the station. Apart from the loading road, there was only an unmetalled farm track on the other side of the level crossing.

The loading area up to the old goods shed is still in the ownership of the Deutsche Bahn AG. The goods shed is now privately owned.

The station used to have seven tracks in all. Tracks 1 and 2 were used for passenger trains, tracks 5 to 7 for goods traffic. Track 1 was the main running track on the line and ran alongside the home platform in front of the station building. Between tracks 1 and 2 there was an island platform from which passengers could access the crossing and passing loop - track 2. Track 3 was another crossing and passing loop and track 4 was a storage siding. Track 5 ran alongside the goods shed and loading ramp. Track 6 was a stub siding that ended at the head of the loading ramp. Track 7 was the loading siding alongside the loading road.

The first dismantling of the trackage took place in 1956 when the storage siding, track 4, was lifted. In the second half of the 1970s the crossing and passing loop, track 3 and the section of track 5 parallel to the loading siding (track 7) was removed. The goods siding, track 5, and the main running line, track 1, were lifted in 1989. The remaining track 2 was connected directly to the running line at both ends.

The station was protected by ten semaphore signals. At both ends of the station there were a twin-armed entry signal and a distant signal. Exit signals were installed at both ends of tracks 1 to 3. All exit signals were single-armed until the end of the 1930s. The signals on the crossing and passing loops, tracks 2 and 3, were then given a second arm so that the "proceed slowly" aspect could be displayed. Tracks 4 to 7 were secured by derailers between tracks 3 and 4, so that stored railway vehicles could not inadvertently roll onto the lines being used by through traffic. The level crossing to the loading road was originally gated.

The points, signal installations and level crossing barriers were controlled by two signal boxes. The main signal box (Befehlsstellwerk), designated by the letters Gw, was located at the western end of the station next to the level crossing; and a subsidiary or "pointsmen's" signal box (Wärterstellwerk), designated as Go, at the eastern end.

In the late 1950s operations on the line were downgraded to a simplified branch line service by the Deutsche Bundesbahn. As a result, the signal boxes, signals, point drives for the remotely controlled points and barriers were removed. The level crossing has since been protected by flashing lights. The entry turnouts were thrown, when necessary, by train crews using a lever apparatus located in a shelter by the station building.

Following the opening of the Wittenberge–Buchholz branch to Buchholz in der Nordheide, two pairs of passenger trains and a pair of mixed trains stopped at Göhrde station daily, enabling through connexions to Wittenberge and Buchholz. The number of train connexions did not change when the Berlin-Hamburg Railway was nationalised in 1884. Journey times in the early years were about 66 minutes to Lüneburg and 44 minutes to Dannenberg. The price of a single, second class ticket to Lüneburg in 1880 was 200 pfennigs and a third class ticket was 130 pfennigs. A single to Dannenberg cost 120 pfennigs in second class and 80 pfennigs in third class.[17]

At the beginning of the 1910s the branch in Lüneburg was split into two lines and through services to Buchholz ceased. The passenger trains stopping in Göhrde now started and finished their journeys at Lüneburg. After the Second World War the line was severed when the Russians dropped the bridge over the Elbe at Dömitz; through services to Wittenberge were now no longer possible. The passenger trains that stopped at the station were largely restricted to those working the Lüneburg–Dannenberg Ost route. The only exceptions were the occasional Eilzug pairs that ran from the 1960s onwards, the so-called "semi-fast hedgerow trains" (Heckeneilzüge), that sometimes provided through connexions to Hamburg Hauptbahnhof. These semi-fast trains were withdrawn when the timetable changed in May 1988.

The number of passenger trains stopping at Göhrde varied during the 20th century between six and fourteen daily. On average five pairs of trains ran each day. Before the First World War there were seven pairs in the timetable; this number reduced during the war to five. The last timetable used before the Second World War had five pairs of trains in it, of two were dropped during the war years and the immediate post-war period. In the 1950s, ten passenger trains stopped at the station on workdays, just as many as in the winter timetable of 1988/89.[18]

Currently five Regionalbahn trains pass each way on workdays, running every 3 hours. On Sundays and holidays they run every four hours; three trains working the line to Lüneburg and four to Dannenberg. The journey time to Lüneburg is 42 minutes and to Dannenberg, 26 minutes.[14] The HVV fare for a single ticket from Göhrde to Lüneburg in second class is 2.60 euros and the normal DB fare for a single from Göhrde to Dannenberg is 4.90 euros.[19][20][21]

Goods were handled at Göhrde station from the outset and data is available from the early years of the station's life. According to these figures, Göhrde station handled 23 tonne-kilometres (c.f. Lüneburg 1782, Dahlenburg 39 and Dannenberg 708 tonne-kilometres).[4]

Amongst the goods delivered to Göhrde were food, in the form of part-piece loads, and artificial fertiliser, briquets and coke, peat, sugar beet scraps and other feedstuffs in full wagon loads. Goods dispatched included eating and seed potatoes, sugar beet, straw, hay, pit props, oak, beech and spruce logs, animals for slaughter and for breeding. Even by imperial times, grain was loaded for dispatch to Berlin. In the 1920s wood for dolphins was delivered from Göhrde to Hamburg Harbour and, in the post-war years, large quantities of pit props were sent to the Ruhr area. Sugar beet was loaded here until the late 1980s.[22] In the last years before the goods facilities were closed logs were the only freight to be loaded at Göhrde.

From the end of the 1960s, goods were handled by a local goods train (Nahgüterzug) that ran from Lüneburg to Dannenberg Ost. Although it did not stop at Göhrde station, the wagons were only transported as far as Dahlenburg. From Dahlenburg the freight was then delivered to Göhrde on a goods transfer train (Übergabegüterzug), which was hauled by a light shunter of the Kleinlokomotive or Köf type. Freight was dispatched again using a Nahgüterzug from Dannenberg Ost to Lüneburg, that returned again after reaching the Dannenberg terminus at the end of the line. In the 1980s, goods were transported exclusively by transfer trains to and from Lüneburg. During the sugar beet harvest, additional goods trains were laid on. These entailed a Köf, stationed in Dannenberg Ost, hauling a transfer train twice a week from Dannenberg to Göhrde and back.[22]