Köln-Mülheim Station
Regional and S-Bahn hub in northeast Cologne, opened in 1909 as the joint station of the then-independent town of Mülheim am Rhein.
In the 19th century, every private railway company in Mülheim am Rhein had its own facilities and lines. After nationalization, merging the stations was seen as urgent. How this should be done was debated for a long time.
Source: Wikipedia
At a Glance
- Type
- Regional station of Deutsche Bahn AG
- Location
- Mülheim district, on the right bank of the Rhine in Cologne
- Opened
- 1 July 1909, after construction began in 1903
- Layout
- four platforms, seven tracks
- Passenger services
- Cologne – Duisburg, Cologne – Wuppertal and Köln-Mülheim – Bergisch Gladbach lines
- Freight
- separate through tracks on the Mülheim-Speldorf–Troisdorf line
- Long-distance services
- no stops
For a suburban station, Köln-Mülheim is unusually large, with four platforms and seven tracks, because Mülheim was still an independent city when the station opened in 1909 and was only incorporated into Cologne in 1914.
From Side by Side to a Joint Station
The Cologne-Minden and Bergisch-Märkische railway companies ran their stations directly next to each other on Buchheimer Straße, near Wiener Platz. Only the Rhenish Railway Company already had its station at the site of today's station, on the Mülheim-Speldorf–Troisdorf line opened in 1874. Passenger trains stopped there only until 1 June 1886, when the extension from Deutz Schiffbrücke station to Kalk Süd opened and passenger service between Opladen and Troisdorf ended. For the new building, the two other stations were demolished and their lines shifted eastward. When the station opened in 1909, all freight and passenger traffic moved onto the merged lines.
A Station for a City of Its Own
At first the station was named Mülheim am Rhein. Mülheim was still an independent city then and only became part of Cologne in 1914. That explains why the complex is so generously sized for a suburban station. The station building was destroyed in the bombing raids of 1944 and rebuilt in simplified form in 1951.
S-Bahn, Expansion and Signal Box
The S-Bahn has served the station since 1975, initially on the Bergisch Gladbach – Cologne – Köln-Chorweiler route. The S-Bahn trunk line opened in 1990. From 2004, the track area was rebuilt as part of the line upgrade toward Köln Messe/Deutz (tief). The Köln-Mülheim Mf signal box has been in operation since 1983 and is being replaced by an electronic interlocking.
Linking Region and City
Several local transport lines stop here, including two Regional-Express lines. Only the Rhein-Münsterland-Express (RE 7) passes through without a scheduled stop. At the southern end, the tracks cross Frankfurter Straße. Beneath it lies a light rail (Stadtbahn) stop, open since 1997, with an island platform and two tracks. Its platform is 90 meters long, designed for three-car trains, and is served by lines 13 and 18.
The S-Bahn platform was extended southward so that an elevator connects it directly to the Stadtbahn platform. A mezzanine also gives access to both via stairs and escalators. The regional rail platforms, by contrast, are reachable only through the station tunnel and the station building. KVB bus lines 150 to 153 also stop at the station.
Former Training Travel Center
Until 2017, the station building housed Deutsche Bahn's only training travel center in North Rhine-Westphalia. Trainees in travel advisory from across the state ran the counters on their own responsibility, spending several weeks there in each of their first and second years of training. An instructor was on hand in case of difficulties. The office then continued as a regular DB travel center until 2025. Since then, it has served as a customer center for Go.Rheinland.
Timeline
- 1874Opening of the Mülheim-Speldorf–Troisdorf line of the Rhenish Railway
- 1886Passenger service ended at the Rhenish Railway's Mülheim station
- 1909Opening of the new consolidated Mülheim am Rhein station
- 1944Reception building destroyed in bombing raids
- 1951Reception building rebuilt in simplified form
- 1975Start of S-Bahn service
- 1990Opening of the S-Bahn trunk line
- 1997Opening of the underground light-rail station Bahnhof Mülheim
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Sources & links
Auto-generated, last verified: 2026-10-24
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