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Building Number 7 in the printed brochure
“Historic Buildings in Münchberg”.

The sign is to the right of the main entrance.
(At the wish of the owners at the time, the sign was made in "Bahn blue".)

When King Ludwig I decided in the 40s year of the 19th century to establish a rail link from the North to the South of Bavaria, Münchberg was also connected to the Ludwig-South-North-Train in 1848. This required the building of a train station.

It was planned as a “cheerful” building by architect Gottfried Neureuther. The design comes from May 1844. In the 62 meter long building should be accommodated: two waiting rooms (1st and 2nd class), rooms for ticketing and luggage transfer, apartment of the station manager, signalman barracks with apartments for chairman and sleeping room for about eight men, washroom, water house with free standing cranes, open charging scales with coach houses for wagons, small magazine for accommodation of broken equipment, public toilets.

After small changes the construction was approved in 1846 by the king, but the financial crisis of the Bavarian state hindered the generous design; it only allowed a scaled down version of a 29 meter long construction with charging halls and scales. But the “Antique-Roman style” wished by the king remained. On the façade the hierarchical order is recognizable. The apartment of the upper signalman on the first floor is lower; the windows are smaller (with segmented arches) than the station master (round arches).

In 1875 (extension of the expedition area) and 1881 (addition of the waiting room, 3rd class and current restaurant) the train station was extended.

The original facing brickwork of gneiss and granite corners was plastered in 1902. In 1985 a new goods hall was built, in 1937/38 the west wing lengthened and the main hall expanded. Renovations followed in 1976/77 and 2002.

Münchberg lies on the railroad track between Hof and Neuenmarkt-Wirsberg, on which steam locomotives (2nd photo below) traveled until the 1970’s. There were direct train connections to Dresden or Nürnberg. A further railroad track to Helmbrechts existed since 1887 (4th photo below), on which for a long time the red “rail bus” (3rd photo below) ran. Between 1902 and 1971 trains also traveled to Zell at the Waldstein, then the trains were dismantled and now end in the Mechlenreuth transformer station.

Around 100 meters east of the train station an “air bridge” over the rails was built in 1904, mainly for the workers in the Münchberg textile companies. For many years the iron construction has shortened the route to school or the workplace for students and adults in the city. After a construction train with excavator ran into the construction in October 1980, the bridge had to be repaired for three weeks.
In the past decades, many work places in Münchberg were lost, and more and more people used their cars for the daily trip. With that, the “air bridge” (5th photo below) lost its meaning bit by bit, and so the now ailing steel construction was finally dismantled on July 29, 2015 due to massive damage. A piece of the bridge was transferred to the German steam locomotive museum in Neuenmarkt. The northern stair tower was dismantled and the southern one redesigned as a viewing and photo spot for friends of the railroad.

You can find further information about the Train Station and the railways in Band 1 zur Stadtgeschichte "Eisenbahn in Münchberg 1848-1998".