Berlin Hauptbahnhof

Berlin´s new Hauptbahnhof (main train station) opens this week. The 5 storey steel and glass structure took 8 years to complete on a budget of 700 million euros. It features glass panels with an amazing display of Glass and Metal, the motive of almost all the major constructions in the capital city. It also has Berlin´s largest photovoltaic system, a network of solar cells mounted onto the glass itself and is designed to produce 160 Megawatt-hours of electricity each year. It is Europe´s largest station and will handle 1100 trains each day. It has about 54 escalators and 34 lifts offering a full view of the city. Located on banks of river Spree, it is close to where the Berlin Wall once stood. "The gleaming hulk of glass and steel is a "pyramid" for the modern age" according to the Egyptian-German Hany Azer who supervised the construction project. Also referred to as "the gigantic glass armadillo", the whole architecture is armor-plated with 9,000 separate sections and the station's curvature means no two pieces of glass are of the same size.

The whole building is a collection of individually crafted pieces and special attention to detail:* Grooves in the floor help blind passengers find their way to the platforms. For further assistance, raised numbers and Braille have been integrated into metal signs on the hand rails.

* Travelers will be spared some of the noise and bustle associated with train stations, since the approaching high-speed ICE and regional trains slide up to the platform with not much more than whisper. The tracks are embedded in concrete rather than the more commonplace gravel, reducing noise to a minimum.

* Engineers have also come up with nifty precautions against unforeseen accidents. In case of a train derailment, it will automatically slot into an extra track. Compact walls of concrete are in place to prevent the bulky carriages tipping onto adjacent tracks.

* A suspension system in the body of the platforms radically reduces vibration as the trains -- each weighing several hundred tons -- roll in. Thanks to this technology, the buildings close by at Potsdamer Platz and the government quarter won't shudder every minute as the locomotives trundle through.
But of all the fancy innovations, the fanciest may be the loudspeaker system. It's almost impossible to make sense of the garbled, barely audible announcements in most of Germany's train stations. But in Berlin's Central Station, sound engineers have created speaker system that make the computer-automated announcements crystal clear and understandable.

Disclaimer: The photographs are of the courtesy of AFP.