Hanau Hauptbahnhof
Hanau Hauptbahnhof is a railway station at Hanau in the German state of Hesse, and is a major railway junction east of Frankfurt am Main. It was opened in 1867, but the current building was built in the late 1960s. It is located about south-east of central Hanau. It is classified by Deutsche Bahn as a category 2 station and has many train services, including Intercity Express, regional and S-Bahn services.
Links
Hanau Hbf station is a central hub of the railway network that is served by six routes. It is served by:- Frankfurt-Hanau Railway
- Main-Spessart Railway
- Frankfurt-Bebra Railway
- * towards the east: Kinzig Valley Railway, Hanau–Fulda–Göttingen
- * towards the west: Offenbach am Main–Frankfurt am Main, as the South Main S-Bahn
- Friedberg–Hanau railway to Friedberg
- Odenwald Railway
History
The Hanau east station was built at the junction between the extension of the Frankfurt-Hanau railway connecting with the Main–Spessart railway to Aschaffenburg and the Kinzig Valley Railway to Bebra. Its position was chosen to allow the building of a bridge over the Main to Steinheim as part of the south bank route to Frankfurt. At the same time Hanau depot was built at Heideäcker. An entrance building was built at Hanau Ost on the island between the line towards Fulda and the line to Aschaffenburg.
The constraints imposed by the position of the crossing of the Main explain why the station was built so far from the centre of the city, which is still a significant problem for public transport in Hanau: two centres must be served: the Hauptbahnhof and the downtown bus junction in Freiheitsplatz. Until the end of the Second World War, the station served a tram line of the Hanau Tramway.
On 15 May 1927, the station was renamed from Hanau Ost station to Hanau Hauptbahnhof.
The original station building was demolished in 1966 and replaced by a building north of the tracks with a spacious station forecourt. The original location as an island station can still be recognised from the track numbering and road connections between the tracks to the nearby park and ride facility. The floor level of the main level of the new station was determined by the location of the existing pedestrian underpass, which was retained. Since the station was built partly in a former river bed of the Main, there will always be problems with water penetration, especially after storms. The passenger accessible part of the entrance building was transformed fundamentally in the early 1990s with the reorganisation of baggage and express freight operations.
Operations
Long-distance services
Hanau station is classified by Deutsche Bahn as a category 2 station. It is connected by Intercity-Express and Intercity services to cities in a large part of Germany and some cities outside Germany.| Line | Route | Frequency |
| Berlin – Leipzig – Erfurt – Hanau – Frankfurt – Mannheim – Stuttgart – Munich | Every 2 hours | |
| Berlin – Hildesheim – Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe – Hanau – Frankfurt – Mannheim – Karlsruhe – Freiburg – Basel Bad Bf – Basel SBB | Every 2 hours | |
| Hamburg – Osnabrück – Dortmund – Duisburg – Cologne – Koblenz – Frankfurt – Hanau – Würzburg – Nuremberg – Passau | Individual services | |
| Frankfurt – Hanau – Würzburg – Nuremberg – Passau - Linz - Vienna | Every 2 hours |