Radebeul-Weintraube station
Description
Radebeul-Weintraube station is in Radebeul in the German state of Saxony. It is classified by Deutsche Bahn as a Haltepunkt (“halt”, that is it has no sets of points). Weintraube (“bunch of grapes”) station was opened in 1838 in the Lößnitz fields (the banks of the Elbe downstream from Dresden) as the first station out of Dresden on Germany's oldest long-distance railway, the Leipzig–Dresden railway. It is now the oldest station still regularly served in Saxony.HistoryConstruction of the Leipzig–Dresden railway was begun from both ends simultaneously and it was opened in stages between 1837 and 1839. The 8.18 km long section from Dresden-Neustadt to Weintraube was opened on 19 July 1838. The current Radebeul-Weintraube station was opened near the royal estate of Hoflößnitz as the first station on the line from Dresden and the first station in the borders of the modern town of Radebeul. It was named Weintraube after the name of the nearby vineyard the Goldene Weintraube (golden bunch of grapes) and its similarly named inn. The innkeeper took the opportunity to open an inn next to the station called Kleine Weintraube (small bunch of grapes).By the end of August of that year, 68,000 people had already had taken the "steam ride" to the Lößnitz, which took twelve minutes according to a contemporary lithograph. It names the locomotives that ran there as: Blitz, Bury and Comet and the passenger carriages as: Guttenberg, Gustav, Wittekind and Tell.