München Hauptbahnhof

Main railway station in Munich, Germany

München Hauptbahnhof or Munich Central Station is the main railway station in the city of Munich, Germany. It is one of the three stations with long distance services in Munich, the others being Munich East station (München Ost) and Munich Pasing station (München Pasing). München Hauptbahnhof sees about 450,000 passengers a day, which puts it on par with other large stations in Germany, such as Hamburg Hauptbahnhof and Frankfurt (Main) Hauptbahnhof. It is classified by Deutsche Bahn as a category 1 station, one of 21 in Germany and two in Munich, the other being München Ost. The station is bordered to the north by Arnulfstraße and to the west by Paul Heyse Straße, which passes through a tunnel near the end of the platforms. The station is bordered to the south by Bayerstraße. The station precinct extends some distance to the west and ends at Donnersbergerbrücke.

During the industrialisation of the mid 19th century a new, more efficient system was needed to accelerate the transport of passengers and goods. Horse drawn carts on the mostly poor roads were no longer sufficient. As a solution, the construction of a railway, as was being developed in England, was considered. However, the Bavarian King, Ludwig I preferred the extension of canals. Construction of railways was left to private companies and associations. After the opening of the approximately railway from Nuremberg to Fürth on 28 November 1835, interested citizens founded railway committees in Munich and Augsburg. The two committees soon joined to facilitate the construction of a railway line from Augsburg to Munich. The two major cities would be connected by a faster service than could be provided by stagecoach over a distance that in 1835 was measured as 17 Poststunden (“post hours”, which were each half a Bavarian mile, that is about ), equivalent to about Based on the travel speed of a locomotive, a railway could be expected to reduce travel time to one third of a stage coach's time. The railway committee commissioned a state official to plan the approximate route of the line. The state was to build the railway. The government turned down the proposal, but indicated that Bavaria would financially support its construction. Joseph Anton von Maffei founded the Munich–Augsburg Railway Company (München Augsburger Eisenbahn Gesellschaft) as a private company on 23 July 1837. After further support from shareholders had been found, construction began in the spring of 1838.

In 1838, the initial planning began for the station in Munich. The Planning Director of the Munich–Augsburg railway, Ulrich Himbsel, and his deputy, Joseph Pertsch, proposed a railway layout with an entrance building and a warehouse for freight. Behind the entrance building, a semicircular building was followed by four radially arranged halls. This was based on English models. Joseph Pertsch preferred a location on today's Sonnenstraße, while Ulrich Himbsel favoured a station at Spatzenstraße. This would have been at the location of the current station. The Munich Augsburg railway company could not afford the building and the land on either site. A temporary wooden building was put into operation with the opening of the first section of the line from Munich to Lochhausen on the Munich–Augsburg line on 1 September 1839. This station was built in Marsfeld at the present site of Hackerbrücke. It consisted of a simple wooden station building and two toll booths. In the entrance building there were two waiting rooms and several work spaces. Attached to this building there was a wide station hall with two tracks with a turntable at the end of each. There was also a locomotive workshop in the station area. A year later, on 4 October 1840, the entire line to Augsburg was opened. The line was used by about 400 passengers daily. The wooden building was considered to be too small for a city like Munich and not very impressive. King Ludwig commissioned the architect Friedrich von Gärtner to redesign the station in 1843. It would be closer to the city centre, as the old station was half an hour away from the city. When, in 1844, the Munich Augsburg Railway Company was nationalised, the first steps for the realisation of a new station building were carried out. Three new plans were presented. The station under the first option would have been at the shooting range, under the second option it would have been on the Marsfeld plain and under the third it would have been on Sonnenstraße. In the following years, the state and the city could not choose between the three proposals. The station suffered a major fire on 4 April 1847, although its cause could not be determined. No one was injured. Parts of the freight and operations facilities were destroyed. On 5 April 1847, the king of Bavaria decided to build the new station at the shooting range. The station at Marsfeld was to be restored in the autumn of 1847 to serve until the completion of the new station. Due to a delay in the construction, the tracks were extended to the buildings of the former shooting range. The building of the shooting range now served as an entrance building to the new station, which was opened on 15 November 1847. It was equipped with the latest technology, a central hot water heater and a mechanical clock with a central drive, with dials that were up to from the central mechanism. The station was illuminated from 1851 by coal gas. The new building proved again to be too small with the opening of the railway to Landshut in 1858. This meant that the Royal Bavarian Eastern Railway Company (Königlich privilegirte Actiengesellschaft der bayerischen Ostbahnen) built a station north of the actual station. The new station, also called the Ostbahnhof, consisted of a and platform hall with four tracks. This became a carriage house with three tracks, a goods shed and other outbuildings.

Between 1925 and 1927, six of the lines beginning in Munich were electrified so that all parts of the station except the Holzkirchen wing station received overhead lines. From 1933, Adolf Hitler directed Hermann Alker to create new plans for rebuilding the station. A new station would be built between Laim and Pasing stations and the old railway tracks would be replaced by a boulevard from Karlsplatz to the new station. In addition, a U Bahn was planned from the new station to the central city under the boulevard. Alkers presented his plans but his client was not satisfied, as the station building would not look impressive at the end of the wide boulevard. In 1938, Hermann Giesler, solved the problem by turning the station to a 45 degree angle to the road. He planned a huge domed building with a height of and a diameter of
The timetable of the summer 1939 showed the station had a total of 112 arrivals and departures by scheduled long distance services each day. It was the eleventh busiest node of Deutsche Reichsbahn's long distance network.

During World War II the station suffered heavy damage from Allied bombing, but train services resumed after each air raid.

The central signalling centre was brought into operation on 11 October 1964 at 4 AM. The new signal box controlled 295 sets of points and 446 signals and detected occupancy on 300 sections of track and seven automatic block sections. The Starnberg wing station was affected by the construction of the S Bahn trunk line from 1967 because the trunk line was built under it. The trunk line and the new underground station were taken into operation on 28 April 1972 in time for the 1972 Summer Olympics. During the Summer Olympics the station had a high volume of passengers. On 2 September 1972, there were, for example, 35,000 passengers, excluding S Bahn operations.

The platforms were narrow, with a width of and were too low. After the elimination of the wide baggage platforms, new passenger platforms were built that are up to high and up to wide. In addition, the facilities of the platforms, such as benches, were renewed and some platforms were extended to be long. A baggage tunnel was put into operation under tracks 12 and 13. Since 2004, the entire area of the station has video monitoring. The 70 cameras are controlled by the control center of DB Security in the station. Meanwhile, the split flap displays have been replaced with more modern LCD displays. The loudspeaker systems have also been modernised.

A Transrapid route to Munich Airport was planned and to be operational in 2011. However, the original cost estimate of €1.85 billion was revised to €3.2 billion due to the increased price for steel and other materials. The cost escalation caused the project to be cancelled in 2007. From 2013 to 2015, the mezzanine level linking the Hauptbahnhof to the current S Bahn and U Bahn stations and pedestrian pathways to the streets and aboveground tram platforms was extensively renovated to give the bright and airy feeling, to comply with new EU regulations on fire protection measures and escape routes, and to increase the number of stores and restaurants. The current Hauptbahnhof consists of several buildings that were constructed at various times without any common design or physical cohesion between them. This causes lot of maintenance headaches and difficulties in navigating from one area to another for passengers and employees. The various buildings have their own façades that don't harmonise with each other; the larger building resembles some East German Plattenbau architecture. Some areas radiate a quite gloomy and unwelcoming atmosphere. The current layout has all platforms connecting to the main concourse in the east, making the transfers from one train to other lengthy and inconvenient. The passengers boarding and disembarking the trains at either Holzkirchner or Starnberger must walk even longer way through the often crowded platforms 11 and 26 respectively.

The proposal for an extensive reconstruction project of Hauptbahnhof has been launched in 2015 with plannings approved in 2017 and 2018. The project called for complete replacement of many Hauptbahnhof buildings except for the steel reinforced building in the middle that covers the platforms 11 through 26. The new single building utilises a modern and more unified design surrounding the central platform hall along with a new aboveground pedestrian zone in the east towards Karlsplatz (Stachus). A new office tower will be built at the northwestern corner of the area to be used for a branch of Deutsche Bahn's administration department. A new underground pedestrian tunnel will be built at western parts of platforms 11–26, connecting the Starnberger and Holzkirchner wing stations directly as well as the platforms 11–26 and subway stations. This will reduce the need to walk to the main concourse for transferring to other trains. The construction of a second S Bahn trunk route (a second main tunnel route through the centre of Munich) with a second S Bahn station has begun in 2018. While the new U Bahn line, designated as U9, has been planned and approved, the construction has yet to begun and would not be completed until 2035 at latest. However, the construction of third U Bahn station for U9 line has been incorporated at the same time to expedite the completion of three projects at the same site. On 24 October 2018, the reconstruction project was officially launched with the removal of large clock on the eastern main façade, which will be transferred to the new building as a link to the past. Shortly after the launch, the eastern entrance hall and middle part of the large building were demolished for the construction of second S Bahn and third U Bahn stations. The three projects are expected to be completed by 2028.

There are four tram stops around the station, known as Hauptbahnhof, Hauptbahnhof Nord, Hauptbahnhof Süd and Holzkirchner Bahnhof. Hauptbahnhof Nord is served by routes 16, 17, 20, 21 and 29. The Hauptbahnhof stop on the station forecourt is served by 16, 17, 19, 20 and 29, with routes 20 and 29 only stopping towards Stiglmaierplatz. The Hauptbahnhof Süd and Holzkirchner Bahnhof stops are served by routes 18, 19 and 29. The first tram route serving the station forecourt, was a horse tram line that ran from Promenadenplatz to Maillingerstraße and was opened on 21 October 1876. Over the next few years, the horse tram network was expanded and by 1900, four tram routes served the station. The network was electrified and further expanded and by 1938, nine routes served Hauptbahnhof, which had become one of the focal points of the Munich tram system. By 1966, Hauptbahnhof was served by ten tram routes. In the years following, the number of trams and routes in Munich declined, mostly as a result of the construction of the U Bahn, but they continued to serve Hauptbahnhof, albeit with frequent route number changes and with the number of services serving the station increasing to eleven at one point. Since 2018, MVG CityRing bus routes 58 clockwise//68 anti clockwise have served the station. The Hauptbahnhof Nord stop is also served by Museum Bus route 100, as well as by some regional bus services. The whole station forecourt is currently (2020) being remodelled with an extra, third track for trams, which when completed, will see the recasting of the tram services in this area, planned for 2021/2022. Many station buildings have also been demolished in connection with the construction of the 'Second Cross City S Bahn' tunnel to be completed in the period 2028/2032. This will also see a further, fourth tram track laid on the station forecourt.