Neu Isenburg station

Two shunting sidings were built in late 1873 and a rail siding was opened to the brickworks of Philipp Holzmann & Cie. in the same year, which boosted the economy of the town. All the sets of points at the site had to be operated by hand at first. The first signal box was built in 1876, which could set points and signals using wires. In 1893, the signal box was replaced by a centralised interlocking[3] called Isb.

In 1894 the station received its first electric lights. In 1900, the northern shunting siding on the line to Darmstadt, which had in the meantime been used as a freight yard, was reinstated for shunting. Traffic at the station had already increased to 100,000 passengers and 45,000 tons of freight per year.

Branch to freight yard

Neu-Isenburg freight yard

In 1904, a second signal box was opened with the name If.

In order to improve the railway connection to the centre of Neu-Isenburg, a branch line, which was about 2.2 km long, was commissioned to the southern part of the town on 20 March 1902. The line was single track and ran to a freight yard with six tracks. The southernmost of these tracks had two manually operated turntables, which connected to industrial sidings. This branch line only carried freight because the Frankfurt Forest Railway (Frankfurter Waldbahn,) already provided a connection from Neu-Isenburg to Frankfurt for passengers (now line 14 of the Frankfurt trams). At the end of 2006 this (never electrified) branch line was closed and the tracks were later partly removed.

During the occupation of the Ruhr in 1923, Neu Isenburg station was commandeered by French troops and could not be entered by Germans. As many in Isenburg depended on a railway connection, an emergency station was established by a local railway on a siding only 400 metres away from the station in the district of Frankfurt, which was not occupied. It consisted merely of a wooden hut for the sale of tickets and a plank crossing of the track, which ensured a reasonably safe entry and exit. The provisional station only closed with the withdrawal of French troops in September 1924.

During the Second World War the town of Neu-Isenburg and its station were repeated exposed to heavy air raids, but—in contrast to other stations in the area—the entrance building was unharmed and only parts of its tracks were damaged; these were quickly repaired after the war. There was a major accident in the last days of 1945 when the dispatcher on duty left the signal box to go to a shelter in anticipation of an air raid. Previously he had set the signal to permit a train from Frankfurt to run on to track 3, without remembering that the track was still occupied by a passenger train. The collision of the trains led to the death of nearly forty people.

In the early 1960s, Deutsche Bundesbahn decided to join the Frankfurt Rhine-Main region to the international motorail network. It chose Neu-Isenburg station as the terminal for these operations. The first car train stopped here in on 29 May 1961. In 1968, the car loading facility gained a second track.

On 14 April 1969, the Isb and If signal boxes were replaced by a new combined signal box called If, which took over the functions of the Bf and Bn signal boxes in Dreieich-Buchschlag. It is a relay interlocking of class Sp Dr S 60 (a Siemens pushbutton interlocking introduced in 1960). The interlocking is still operating today.

Shunting ended at Neu Isenburg station in 1983. Since 1997, the station has been an S-Bahn stop.

The station is served by the Rhine-Main S-Bahn and DB Regio services.

S-Bahn lines S 3 and S 4 each stop at the station every half hour on weekdays, which together provide services every 15-minute. On Sundays, both lines operate every hour, together providing a service every half hour. The Regionalbahn RB 61 service (Dreieich Railway) runs from Monday to Friday three times in the morning from Dieburg to Frankfurt and three times in the afternoon from Frankfurt to Dieburg on the line.[4]

Loading dock with waggons

The station has a loading dock for motorail trains of DB AutoZug. During the summer season approximately 10,000 vehicles are loaded at the Auto Train terminal. Passengers drive themselves over a paved ramp on to a two-story car transport waggon. In the first 25 years of the motorail terminal in Neu-Isenburg handled 200,000 vehicles. Upon the arrival of the train, the loaded wagons are attached to the train and passengers board sleeping and couchette cars. Trains run from Neu-Isenburg to Narbonne in France, Alessandria and Verona in Italy and Villach in Austria. A glass-enclosed waiting room is available on the south side of the station for users of the service.

East side bus stop

West side bus stop and Park+Ride parking area

There are two bus stops, served by the transport companies of the Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund (Rhine-Main Transport Association, RMV). The Bahnhof Westseite (west side) bus stop connects Neu Isenburg station with Terminal 1 of Frankfurt Airport, the Obertshausen station (line 651) and Rödermark-Urberach (line OF-95).

The Bahnhof Ostseite (east side) bus stop is served by buses to Darmstadt-Arheilgen (line 662) and Mörfelden via Langen (line 663).

Line OF-51 operates every hour from Zeppelinheim station to the east side (terminating there) or continuing via the west side to Gravenbruch.

There is a taxi rank on the east side of the station and a park and ride car park has been built on the west side. There is a restaurant, a kiosk and a travel centre and a motorail ticket office the station building.