Köln West Station

From 1859, the connection from the Cölner Centralbahnhof to the Left Rhine line ran along the inside of the city wall, in the area of today's Ringe. After the wall was demolished starting in 1881, the city council decided in 1883 to move the tracks onto an embankment further from the centre. Underpasses were built at all the arterial roads. Köln West – spelled "Cöln West" until 1914 – and Köln Süd were built on the line, which was overseen by Ernst Dircksen. The façade of the former reception building already looked much as it does today. Unlike now, however, the embankment then carried a platform hall spanning the passenger tracks and the platform with its waiting room.

Anyone travelling south has to make a detour here: directly north of the station, the passenger tracks diverge. The northbound track leads directly to the main station, while the southbound track skirts the operations depot to the north in a wide arc and is almost 500 metres longer. The freight tracks branch off at the north end on the same level: towards Köln-Ehrenfeld, continuing to the Köln – Aachen high-speed line, and towards Köln-Nippes, from where they continue as the left lower Rhine line. A track known as the "Schlundgleis" ("throat track") also branches off the freight tracks and leads through several underpasses, across the site of the dismantled Köln Gereon freight yard, into the operations depot.

Light-rail lines 3, 4 and 5 stop at Hans-Böckler-Platz/Bf. West. Two lifts run from the platform to both Venloer Straße and the light-rail platforms, and there are additional stairs from the forecourt. At the western end, line 5 separates from lines 3 and 4 on a grade-separated junction. The remaining 30-centimetre platform sections once served line 5, which has run high-floor vehicles since 2002; only the 90-centimetre sections are still used. Since almost all stops towards the city centre have now been converted to high platforms, passenger service with low-floor trains is no longer possible today.