Talk:Frankfurt (Main) Ost station

US Army Passenger Trains

The text reads, "Until the early 1990s it was an important station for the United States armed forces. In particular military trains to Berlin operated from here. The US rolling stock was parked in the station sidings when not in traffic." The military trains (known as the Berlin Duty Trains) actually operated from the Hauptbahnhof in downtown Frankfurt. The train to Berlin-Lichterfeld West departed around 7:30 or 8 p.m. and another to Bremerhaven departed at 10:38 p.m. The latter "train" was actually two sleeper cars coupled to the north end of a Deutsche Bundesbahn train. It was handed off at least once during the night to another DB train before being picked up by the Berlin-Bremberhaven Duty Train in Hannover (if I remember correctly) to be taken the rest of the way to Bremerhaven. When leaving Bremerhaven, the Bremerhaven-Frankfurt train and the Bremerhaven-Berlin train departed as one. The two cars going to Frankfurt were dropped off in Braunschweig and almost immediately, as the train to Berlin departed, the train coming from Berlin would arrive in the station and the two cars would be coupled to the train for the rest of the journey to Frankfurt.

Although the Duty Trains used the main stations in Frankfurt/Main and Bremerhaven, in Berlin they used a small Army terminal across from the S-Bahn station at Berlin-Lichterfeld West. After the end of Duty Train service in December 1990, the Army building was closed and subsequently demolished.

I was a Berlin Duty Train conductor in the mid-1970s so I became personally familiar with its route.VilePig (talk)