Three years ago, Ber­lin’s vital urban rail­way, the S-Bahn, had to shut down major parts of its routes. Due to tech­nical issues lively sta­tions such as Alex­an­der­platz or Friedrich­straße were nearly aban­doned. For two weeks no trains ran into the train sheds, no pas­sen­ger were seen on the plat­form. Berlin’s pub­lic trans­port was fal­low. Hap­pily, soon after the ser­vice con­tin­ued at every station.

How­ever, there are some S-Bahn sta­tions that haven’t seen a train for more than thirty years now. Ghost sta­tions. Some of them still exist and are easy to spot, oth­ers are decayed to such an extent that one hardly recog­nizes the plat­form. All of them tell stor­ies from pros­per­ous times long ago, when factor­ies needed to trans­port thou­sands of work­ers or the Bohéme deman­ded for a bet­ter con­nec­tion to the city cen­ter. Some of these stor­ies recount the mega­lo­mania of the Nazi’s Ger­mania pro­ject, oth­ers tell about King Friedrich Wil­helm III’s eager plans to build Prussia’s first rail­way line.

One of the lines best pre­served is the former “Siemens­bahn”, a roughly four kilo­met­ers long rail­way line in Rein­ickendorf. When Siemens’ factor­ies con­tin­ued to expand dur­ing the first dec­ades of the last cen­tury, a whole city gradu­ally arose from the soil: “Siemensstadt”, as it’s rev­er­ently called, provided labour for more than 90.000 work­ers, when the Siemens­bahn star­ted its ser­vice in 1929. Until then only a small and dis­tant sta­tion served for this pur­pose, when even­tu­ally Siemens’ chief exec­ut­ive Carl Friedrich Siemens decided to build a new rail­way line. Dur­ing its peak time, the three sta­tions Garten­feld, Siemensstadt and Wern­er­werke were approached every five minutes and formed the infra­struc­tural spine of Simensstadt.

The rail­way line was heav­ily dam­aged dur­ing Second World War and demoun­ted by the Sowjets. Repairs were car­ried out soon after, so that the trains con­tin­ued to run in 1956. How­ever, Siemens’ busi­ness declined in Rein­ickendorf and the fate of the Siemens­bahn was sealed. After a strike in 1980 the rail­way line was finally shut down.

Today, two of the sta­tions are aban­doned. The former sta­tion “Siemensstadt” still sits enthroned over the street and its cars beneath. Rusty iron plates and crum­bling con­crete remind of its older times, signs for the ticket office and the plat­forms grow more and more illegible under the thick lay­ers of rust and dust. The ground is holey, the railway’s sleep­ers unsound and the roof lets the sun­light through. Graf­fiti and empty bottles bear wit­ness to the guests who came long after the last train stopped here.

The rest of the rail­way fell vic­tim to steady decay as well. The tracks are over­run with weeds and under­growth; heavy cables lie around and fallen trees block the way. One stumbles over any kind of obstacles and, most of the time, can only see twenty meters afar. In this way, the train path chan­nels its course along­side schools and res­id­en­tial build­ings through the neigh­bour­hood. It reaches Wern­er­werk sta­tion which sits atop of a long bridge and con­tin­ues from there until it reaches the Ringbahn.

How­ever, it seems that live has car­ried on here. Park­ing lots were built beneath the bridge, small busi­nesses settled in the former sta­tion building. Gartenfeld now – fit­tingly – houses a garden cen­ter. One might won­der what the fate of the Siemens­bahn will be. How­ever, when it comes to the the local res­id­ents, they some­how came to terms with their private rail­way line: At least, as they say, the noise has van­ished. It’s easier now to lead a calm life here, in the shadow of the once busy Siemensbahn.

Dis­claimer: We don’t advise any­one to tres­pass these or other premises. Please be aware that law, fences, bar­ri­cades, barbed wire, heav­ily sprawl­ing under­growth and wood pre­vent any­one from doing so and that both rough and slip­pery ground, ram­shackle, rusty and rot­ten floors may actu­ally do any­body harm who dis­reg­ards these obstacles. Don’t do any­thing stu­pid and leave everything as you found it.