Erkrath station is a through station in the town of

Erkrath Erkrath () is a town in the Mettmann (district), district of Mettmann, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Geography Erkrath is situated on the river Düssel, directly east of Düsseldorf and west of Wuppertal, close to the famous Neandertal. It ...

in the German state of

North Rhine-Westphalia North Rhine-Westphalia or North-Rhine/Westphalia, commonly shortened to NRW, is a States of Germany, state () in Old states of Germany, Western Germany. With more than 18 million inhabitants, it is the List of German states by population, most ...

. It has two platform tracks and it is classified by

Deutsche Bahn (, ; abbreviated as DB or DB AG ) is the national railway company of Germany, and a state-owned enterprise under the control of the German government. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin, it is a joint-stock company ( AG). DB was fou ...

as a category 5 station.

History

The station was opened along with the

Düsseldorf–Elberfeld railway The Düsseldorf–Elberfeld railway is a 27 km long main line railway in Germany, originally built by the Düsseldorf-Elberfeld Railway Company, connecting Düsseldorf and Elberfeld (now Wuppertal) via Erkrath, Hochdahl and Vohwinkel. It ...

from

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...

to Erkrath by the

Düsseldorf-Elberfeld Railway Company The Düsseldorf-Elberfeld Railway Company (German language, German: ''Düsseldorf-Elberfelder Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft'', DEE) was founded in October 1835 and officially recognised by a Prussian government statute on 23 September 1837. This gave the ...

on 20 December 1838. The line between Erkrath and Hochdahl has a gradient of 3.33% and rises 82 m in about 2.5 km. For more than one hundred years, this was the steepest main line in Europe. For many years trains had to be hauled by cable, originally driven by a stationary steam engine. A few months later haulage by cable attached to a stationary steam engine was changed to haulage by cable attached via pulleys to a locomotive running downhill on an additional track. With the duplication of the remainder of the line in 1865, the steep section of line became three-track, until the electrification of the line in 1963. The third track was rebuilt in 1985, as part of the additional third track built for the planned S-Bahn line. In 1926, cable haulage on the incline was replaced by

bank engine A bank engine (United Kingdom/Australia) (colloquially a banker), banking engine, helper engine or pusher engine (North America) is a railway locomotive that temporarily assists a train that requires additional power or traction to climb a grad ...

Services

The station is served by the

Rhine-Ruhr S-Bahn The Rhine-Ruhr S-Bahn () is a polycentric S-bahn network covering the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Region in the German federated state of North Rhine-Westphalia. This includes most of the Ruhr (and cities such as Dortmund, Duisburg and Essen), the B ...

lines S 8 between

Mönchengladbach Mönchengladbach (, ) is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city in North Rhine-Westphalia, western Germany, west of the Rhine, halfway between Düsseldorf and the Netherlands, Dutch border. Geography Municipal subdivisions Since 2009, th ...

and Wuppertal-Oberbarmen or

Hagen Hagen () is a city in the States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia, in western Germany, on the southeastern edge of the Ruhr area, 15 km south of Dortmund, where the rivers Lenne and Volme meet the Ruhr (river), Ruhr. In 2023, the ...

every 20 minutes and several S 68 services between Wuppertal-Vohwinkel and Langenfeld in the peak hour. It is also served by four bus routes operated by

Rheinbahn Rheinbahn is a German public transport operator operating in Düsseldorf, Meerbusch and Kreis Mettmann. Its network consists of the Düsseldorf Stadtbahn, a network of 11 Stadtbahn (light rail) lines which are integrated in the Rhine-Ruhr St ...

: O5 (every 20–60 minutes), O6 (20), 734 (60) and 743 (60).

References

{{reflist, 30em Rhine-Ruhr S-Bahn stations S8 (Rhine-Ruhr S-Bahn) S68 (Rhine-Ruhr S-Bahn) Railway stations in Germany opened in 1838 1838 establishments in Prussia Buildings and structures in Mettmann (district)