Dresden Central Station 1.0.0

A useful tip for whoever in the future may want to download and use the beautiful Dresden Hauptbahnhof by debussyman, which addresses the criticism about the E-rail by Girafarig.

As he has pointed out, while the twin overhangs on either side allow PASSAGE of elevated rail traffic, they do NOT allow transit of E-rail passengers.

A workaround I found to allow transit for E-rail passengers at this station is to actually build one Mattb325 Victorian train stations WITHIN each overhanging wing (2 on either side, for a total of 4). They are almost completely hidden, though if you squint hard at my screenshot you may be able to see where the elements of the underlying hidden station clip through the wall of the overhang. However, the architectural style of the Victorian train station blends nicely with that of the Dresden Hauptbahnhof - in fact I daresay they add to the interest of the otherwise visually repetitive wall.

Let me start by saying that feel really, really bad by not giving this absolutely stunning station the five stars it deserves from an aesthetic point of view. It could very well be the prettiest rail station, nay, building in the entire ST Exchange. And as a rail station, it's not bad! It has plenty of capacity and several quays, and its design enables it to work both as a terminal and a run-through station.

Now, strictly speaking as a transportation station… it's not very good. It has two compounding flaws, in my opinion.

 

1. It's just rail. This is mostly true of its real-life counterpart, Dresden Hauptbahnhof, which doesn't have a subway station. However, Dresden does have a tram network centered on its central rail station, which this station is lacking. There's also bus services that stop in the real-life Dresden station (which makes sense as it is, again, a transportation hub) but this station also doesn't offer them in SC4. The station does have park-and-ride services and you can, of course, add a nearby bus/subway station, or tram-in-avenue in front of the station, but…
2. Due to the way the lot itself is built, with overhangs and plenty of rails coming out the back, the only way for pedestrians to access the station is at the front. This is unlike most central stations and terminals in the game, that extend just to the end of their lot and can be accessed by pedestrians just by running a road or street next to them, like in real life, where most large stations have some sort of sideways entrance because, due to their size, it's not feasible to expect pedestrians to walk all the way to the front and then to their platforms. You can build a sideways entrance using roads, since the overhangs are occupied by rail viaducts, but it looks slightly uncanny and if you're not building on perfectly level ground, you may run into some issues. There's also no space in the back to build a connecting bus station, since it's all rails (see image attachment). In consequence, if you add a bus and/or subway station at the front, you'll be competing for a tiny fraction of frontage with pedestrians and cars. In practice, I had to add the bus and subway station on the other side of the suggested avenue and 1-way roads (and a cheeky roundabout I added for aesthetics and better connections) and pedestrians simply don't use them to combine with trains. I would suggest trying with pedmalls instead of the one-way roads to better enable connections, but that might hamper the park-and ride capabilities.

There's another far less important issue caused by the overhangs, and that is that the outermost platforms see little use because they're not actually stopping at the station. A bypass might be an useful feature, though, so I'm not taking points away because of that, even though the station is virtually impossible to use to full capacity anyway.

In short, I'm giving this 3/5 as a transportation station (does its job, has park-and-ride and a massive capacity, but it's not useful for combined trips) and a 5/5 as a stunning triumph of architecture, which averages to 4/5.

 

You just got back and gifted us 3 wonderful bats, I really can't help wondering what you have yet in store for us.

You did it! Man, this is truely beautiful working really nicely. I tried some custom set-up with NAM components (GLR lines and Tram-in-Avenue set-up) and with the semi-dragable TIA components and static puzzle pieces one can have quite interesting set-ups under the ERRW wings. This is a very unique BAT and gives us more options with L1 ERRW. Also you managed to put into ONE but a very similiar set-up, what I was working on using multiple buildings! 
Thanks for making and sharing this awesome station!

- Tyberius

Outstanding!

Very cool with the overhanging section for the EL on the side. Sweet job and thank you.

this is a masterpiece.

WOW!!  I wish there were more stars to rate this with.  Speechless.

thank you  this is a beautiful addition to European style buildings and very happy to see you have returned to share your skills with us

Really stunning!

Thanks for sharing. 

Superb building and great layout too, lots of visual interest and character. Can't wait to try it in my Victorian cities!

Grandious design, I wish it was around when I build the city of Dreseden last winter !

Great job....

Oh, splendid ! (So you're really back ! Hurray !)