Mega project new main station Munich: Will it only be finished after 2030?

Created: 06/13/2022, 10:45 am

By: Dirk Walter

Bright and light: this is what the new track hall at Munich Central Station should look like.

© Auer Weber

The construction site at Munich Central Station is already hard to miss.

However, it could still take some time to complete.

A visit to the construction site.

Munich – When Martin Wieser, 52, civil engineer and project manager at Deutsche Bahn, opens gate 4, a man slides behind him through the huge entrance, which is otherwise only used by excavators and concrete mixers.

"Stop," calls Wieser and sends the lost passenger back.

He probably would have been surprised that he didn't end up at the train station, but on a large construction site: Munich's mega construction site at the main station!

Flashback: In the spring of 2019, a machine with giant pliers tears up the mushroom, chunk by chunk, i.e. the canopy to the main entrance.

Munich Central Station: Eight to ten years of construction - a colossus of steel and glass is created

It was the prelude to a major construction site that will probably shape Munich Central Station* for the next eight to ten years.

The train station is to be completely rebuilt for a high three-digit million sum - a colossus of steel and glass, which also has to give way to the venerable Starnberg wing station.

With the exception of the listed track hall, everything will be demolished and rebuilt.

The new 35 meter high main building will have seven floors.

Gastronomy, lockers, offices: "The new reception building, designed by the renowned Auer Weber office, is an architectural highlight," says Deutsche Bahn.

But that's not all: At a depth of 40 meters, the second trunk line will pierce the underground of the station from west to east, there will be a new S-Bahn station under Arnulfstraße - and at some point a new underground station too: The city is planning the lines U9 and U29.

Where the ticket hall used to be, the so-called nucleus is being built, the underground access structure for which Wieser is responsible.

The railway has been under construction for three years now.

During this time, a 55 meter deep diaphragm wall was created.

A rectangular concrete box that surrounds the construction pit and protects it against inflowing groundwater and any gravel masses that may slide down.

"It's like a bathtub, it's sealed," says Wieser.

Munich is in water from a depth of five meters – hence the wall.

The dimensions are enormous: the wall is 1.50 meters thick and was cast in sections 2.80 meters long.

The four walls of the concrete box are 280 meters long in total.

1800 tons of reinforcement steel were installed.

From 2023 it will be tight at Munich Central Station - shops have to make way for the construction site

The concrete box is Wieser's first work.

It's not finished yet, because the box has to be bigger, has to eat its way further west into the current station building.

Wearing a helmet and rubber boots, you exit the construction site through a side door and enter the station.

Wieser stops in the middle of the main hall, next to the service point.

"Starting in 2023, mining will take place here," he says.

Here – in the middle of the train station?

The Deutsche Bahn information desk at Munich Central Station will have to make way for the construction site in the coming year.

© Matthias Balk/dpa

In fact, things will get tight from next year.

The train needs more space.

It will even remove part of the current roof, not the listed area, but the so-called MAN roof over the transverse platform.

The DB information is relocated, the shops have to go - the restaurant mile has already been cleared.

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Munich Central Station: Construction work also underground

But more is currently happening underground at the train station.

Hardly known: The current station has a basement with shafts and tubes, under the tracks there are three tunnels that almost reach the Paul Heyse underpass.

It's stuffy down there, workers are laying cables.

The electrics of the train station are reinvented.

With some of the cables, even the experts no longer knew whether they were still good for anything.

They just pinched them off and waited to see if anyone complained.

(Our Munich newsletter regularly informs you about all the important stories from the Isar metropolis.)

The construction site attracts trade visitors.

"We have a lot of inquiries from students," says Isabel Dresel from the DB communications department.

Works for the “minus 2” level can also be viewed outdoors on the construction site.

This is basically the second basement level for the underground stations.

Concrete is currently being poured piece by piece.

After that, the floor above is to be built, i.e. the “minus 1” level, which will be at about street level.

From 2023, the main line station will be excavated 40 meters deep.

Munich Central Station: Completion in the early 2030s?

That's in the future.

Officially, the second main line should be ready in 2028, the new main station according to official information at about the same time, but that seems unrealistic.

It could arguably last into the early 2030s.

Question to Martin Wieser.

On a scale of one, start of construction, to ten, completion – where do you stand with the construction work?

"With two."