Railway stations with border crossing infrastructure

[MarcVD]

When the Vennbahn was still active, Raeren had a quite complex setup, needed to accommodate the following situations :

- passengers bound to stations in Germany had to be controlled
- passengers bound to german stations on the Vennbahn also had to be controlled
- but passengers to belgian stations further down the line were not

So :

- passengers to Germany had to disembark and get controlled in the station
- passengers who remained in Belgium traveled in dedicated cars that were locked whilst crossing german territory

 

[duesselmartin]

Until sometime in the 1980s Nijmegen had Customs Facilities in the station building for the trains running to and from West Germany on the now closed line via Kleve.



Basel SNCF/SBB had Customs in the main station building to go through before being allowed into the SBB part of the station or vice versa.

Basel Basischer Bahnhof still does.

When the Vennbahn was still active, Raeren had a quite complex setup, needed to accommodate the following situations :

- passengers bound to stations in Germany had to be controlled
- passengers bound to german stations on the Vennbahn also had to be controlled
- but passengers to belgian stations further down the line were not

So :

- passengers to Germany had to disembark and get controlled in the station
- passengers who remained in Belgium traveled in dedicated cars that were locked whilst crossing german territory

The Innsbruck to Reutte trains in Austria had a similar arrangement. A coach was locked for transit through Germany.

 

[QJ]

Basel Basischer Bahnhof still does.


The Innsbruck to Reutte trains in Austria had a similar arrangement. A coach was locked for transit through Germany.

Wasn’t aware of that when I’ve passed through Basel Bbh in the 1980s or more recently (last year).

I travelled from Innsbruck to Reutte by through train and didn’t realise I’d been locked in. During the same holiday I travelled from Innsbruck to Lienz via the Brenner Pass (diesel hauled throughout too) on a Korridorzug. I can’t remember what the practice was Customs wise on that either through the South Tyrol.

I can remember being locked in whilst travelling from Wiener Neustadt to Oberpullendorf via Sopron. I returned through Sopron from Oberpullendorf to Ebenfurth. I had to board a 4 wheel balcony coach which was detached off the back of the Wiener Neustadt loco hauled train and attached to a GySEV dmu for the continuation back into Austria. Whilst stopped in Sopron Hungarian border guards checked the coach for contraband including looking underneath using mirrors. IIRC the platforms at Sopron used by the trains running to and from Austria had a separate entrance and exit to the rest of the station. If you got off you had to go through Hungarian Customs, exit the station then re-enter by another entrance to catch one of the internal services.

 

[Dren Ahmeti]

Weirdly in 2022, I had people around me spot-checked between Venlo (NL) and Nettetal Kaldenkirchen (DE) on the RE13 a few weeks ago.

Think the police got off at Boisheim from what I remember.

 

[TheSeeker]

Interestingly I took the international train from Brussels Central to s-Hertogenbosch (changing at Breda) on Friday. When buying the ticket I was asked for my ID card and my name was printed on the A4 paper ticket. First time that has happened in many years of using that train. It's always been anonymous without an ID check in the past.

 

[rvdborgt]

Interestingly I took the international train from Brussels Central to s-Hertogenbosch (changing at Breda) on Friday. When buying the ticket I was asked for my ID card and my name was printed on the A4 paper ticket. First time that has happened in many years of using that train. It's always been anonymous without an ID check in the past.

Did you buy a ticket at the ticket counter? At the beginning of this year, Belgian railways changed from issuing ATB tickets to PDF tickets also at their international ticket offices and therefore the tickets are not anonymous anymore.
On the plus side, this means that any international journey they sell can now be issued as a PDF ticket and sent via e-mail, also when bought via phone.

 

[TheSeeker]

Did you buy a ticket at the ticket counter?

Yes at the Travel Centre. The ticket machines only had Belgian destinations and it was rather short notice. Thanks for the info.

 

[jamesontheroad]

Malaysia
Padang Besar

This is an interesting one. It's an island platform with tracks on either side, so that northbound (towards Thailand) and southbound (towards Malaysia) trains can arrive in a sterile environment. The two sets of immigration checks are completed in adjacent rooms, you all get off the train, snake through exit controls of one country and then through entry controls of the next country before boarding the train again.

I've told this story in another thread, but in February 2010 I become temporarily stateless here. Travelling on a GBR passport with a Slovakian friend, we were going from Butterworth, Malaysia to Bangkok, Thailand. We were stamped out of Malaysia but the Thai immigration agents refused to allow entry to my friend. Slovakia had been in existance for 16 years at this point, but not all Thai border points had been updated to recognise this fact! We were then de facto trapped, because by the time the problem had been identified and explained to us, the Malaysian immigration agents conducting the exit checks had gone home. She was neither in Malaysia nor Thailand.

I was stamped back out of Thailand (after about 5 minutes in the country) and we retrieved our bags from the train, which left without us. We found the border agents at a nearby road crossing, got stamped back into Malaysia before throwing lots of money at the problem, taking a taxi through the late evening to (I think) Bukit Kayu Hitam where the major highway crossing had immigration staff who knew about Slovakia. We got into Malaysia just before mdinight, before taking another taxi to Hat Yai and continuing the journey the next day.

That one page of stamps in my passport tells quite a story...

/ramble

 

[Capybara]

Now this is an interesting question. My knowledge up until now is that the only border crossing was outside, to the rear of the station, which was a tourist border crossing and limited to only certain nationalities. However, I've done some searching again, and this picture appeared:

View attachment 115289

It seems from doing more digging that there were indeed full border controls on the platform, but they were later replaced with controls on the platform next to the station building. It seems that the later controls were of a tourist nature, so not everyone/everything was controlled, unlike in the picture above. I'm going to research more, but I've definitely found evidence of the border control being carried out on the platform next to the station building.

Do you know when that picture was taken? I've seen quite a few photographs of Bayerisch Eisenstein but never with that building on the platform as far as I can remember.

 

[The exile]

Wasn’t aware of that when I’ve passed through Basel Bbh in the 1980s or more recently (last year).

Basel Bad Bf is an anomaly being German sovereign territory on Swiss soil. You pass through the border on leaving the station - not when “passing through “.

 

[QJ]

Basel Bad Bf is an anomaly being German sovereign territory on Swiss soil. You pass through the border on leaving the station - not when “passing through “.

I did mean entering and exiting the station rather than passing through on a train. However, I was usually suffering from sleep deprivation (too many overnights on trains) when I did so have forgotten how I got onto or off the platform.

No passport checks these days of course.

 

[Cloud Strife]

Do you know when that picture was taken? I've seen quite a few photographs of Bayerisch Eisenstein but never with that building on the platform as far as I can remember.

I'm not sure, but I believe it's from the time of opening in 1991. I found it by searching for Bayerisch Eisenstein bahnhof grenze 1991 on Google Image Search, and this is what comes up, fourth image.


If you look at the bottom right here, there's a picture showing how it looked later. It's on this page - https://www.imago-images.de/fotos-bilder/bayrisch-eisenstein-bahnhof

I've never seen this building as well, which makes me wonder why they installed it and then removed it. The image on the bottom right comes from 2003, so perhaps there was some concern about smuggling and they wanted to control people on the station-side platform instead? It's certainly a mystery as to why they installed these buildings and then later removed them.

edit: one thought came to mind. Is it possible that they were using other platforms, not just this one? That would explain why they would want everyone to go through passport/customs control on the station-side platform, because it's a single point to shuttle everyone through. If you have passport control on the island platform, then people also need to cross the tracks just to cross from CZ to DE.

second edit: this picture (from https://landesecho.cz/index.php/unterwegs/1549-lueckenschluss-boehmisch-bayerisch-eisenstein ) has left me even more confused. The platform is clearly barriered off and travellers are directed onto the station-side platform. But, we can clearly see that the border on the platform is also closed, which raises the question of just how this worked. There appears to be a sign on the Czech side of the platform directing people inside, so perhaps the controls were actually carried out inside the building? There's a "Policie" sign on the wall, too.

 

[Taunton]

The Ireland borders were very formally staffed by uniformed customs officials (with hats) from both sides, which seemed exceptionally petty. In a rural area with limited employment opportunities, the various posts paid at Dublin/Belfast civil service pay rates were much sought after, and the officials subjected to much comment, on and off duty, both banter and opprobrium, from the local travellers, many of whom they seemed to know. For some of the local lines in the border area, the customs checks, sometimes more than one where the line now passed back and forth, was a last straw at a time of losing traffic to road vehicles.

There was a periodic women's political protest in the 1970s at the Dublin Enterprise arrivals checkpoint at Connolly, which was on the easterly bay platform, regarding various personal items which were normal in the UK but illegal in the Republic, which amusingly made it onto the national TV news, both BBC and RTE, from time to time.

 

[Cloud Strife]

A further update about Bayerisch Eisenstein. I've found the following link, which is a photo report of a journey from the station to Plzen in 1992. It's well worth looking at the link for some of the excellent pictures of rural Czechoslovak stations (including Plzen hl. n.), but these photos confirm that passport control was carried out on the island platform. The buildings are clearly visible, and it appears that the platform was accessed at either end. It's not at all clear to me why the island platform was used, but perhaps it was something to do with the height of the station platforms?

Zugfahrt Bayerisch Eisenstein – Pilsen (1992, 62B)

This sheds a bit more light on things: http://bf-b1.zielbahnhof.de/bayerisch_eisenstein.htm

There is a video here showing that the previous German building on the platform was relocated to the platform next to the station, with the island platform barriered off. The Czech side appears not to have relocated their building, and the signs on the Czech side of the platform in other photos suggest that the passport/customs controls were carried out inside the station by the Czech Republic. The German building was later removed, possibly when the Czech Republic joined the EU and the tourist border crossings ceased to be controlled full time. In that awkward 2004-2007 period, it was very common for smaller pedestrian crossings to be unmanned for part/all of the day, with only spot checks used.

 

[MacCookie]

Basel Bad Bf is an anomaly being German sovereign territory on Swiss soil. You pass through the border on leaving the station - not when “passing through “.

That's not how Wikipedia describes it:

"Although the Badische Bahnhof is located on Swiss territory, it is partly considered a German customs territory due to the state treaty originally concluded between the Grand Duchy of Baden and Switzerland."

"Until Switzerland's accession to the Schengen Agreement on the 12th. In December 2008, the identity card and customs check for travelers who entered or left Badischer Bahnhof took place at counters between the platform underpass and the reception hall."

"In the past, the overlong platforms 1 and 2 (tracks 2 to 5) were divided into a southern, Swiss part and a northern, German part. The trains always arrived in the part of the country of origin and were brought forward to the other part of the platform after customs control and the change of locomotive."

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_Badischer_Bahnhof (translated by Apple)

Also:

"Under property law, the property belongs to the Baden Railway - later Reich Railway, then Federal Railway - but because it is located on Swiss territory, Swiss law applies there. [...] The 1919 Treaty then stipulates, for example, that German officials carry out passport control in the station, but that these officials are subject to the supervision of the Swiss customs administration. Clear conditions look different."

archive.ph

 

[TheSeeker]

Roosendaal, the first station in the Netherlands after the Belgian border must be a candidate. Wikipedia describes it as a "Border Station".

 

[Beebman]

Roosendaal, the first station in the Netherlands after the Belgian border must be a candidate. Wikipedia describes it as a "Border Station".

Wikimedia Commons has a couple of photos of border control on the station in the 1950s:

Photo 1
Photo 2

 

[TheSeeker]

Wikimedia Commons has a couple of photos of border control on the station in the 1950s:

That second one is great.

 

[Cloud Strife]

Wikimedia Commons has a couple of photos of border control on the station in the 1950s:

Photo 1
Photo 2

That's a stunning find, thank you very much! I'm going to try and compile a collection of photographs too, because (as we see from the confusion about Bayerisch Eisenstein) there's a need to document these things visually too.

 

[Watershed]

The station building at Kulata (Bulgaria) had a room labelled 'Customs' when I visited. It hasn't had any international services since before Covid though. I imagine that Strymonas (Greece) would also have such facilities, though I didn't immediately see anything when I visited.

 

[Beebman]

Some more digging in Wikimedia Commons has revealed a 1950s photo of border checks at Venlo station:

Link

 

[DanielB]

Some more digging in Wikimedia Commons has revealed a 1950s photo of border checks at Venlo station:

Link

Might be worthwhile to check the source of that image as well. The uploader at Wikipedia apparently got the image from "Het Utrechts Archief", where all older archives of NS were transferred to.
Quite likely there will be more images available there then. It's all accessible in digitized form via their website.

 

[D6130]

A further update about Bayerisch Eisenstein. I've found the following link, which is a photo report of a journey from the station to Plzen in 1992. It's well worth looking at the link for some of the excellent pictures of rural Czechoslovak stations (including Plzen hl. n.), but these photos confirm that passport control was carried out on the island platform. The buildings are clearly visible, and it appears that the platform was accessed at either end. It's not at all clear to me why the island platform was used, but perhaps it was something to do with the height of the station platforms?

When my wife and I first visited the Czech Republic - as it had become by then - in 1994, we travelled from Regensburg via Plattling to Bayerisch Eisenstein in a two coach train hauled by a DB class 211 loco as in those photos. On alighting at the German end of the island platform, we walked forward towards the CD train, which was a 754 'Goggles' with three rather tatty dark green side corridor coaches. My wife was eagerly anticipating receiving a Czech stamp in her passport, but on passing the first hut, the German border official was sitting with his feet up on his desk reading a newspaper and totally ignored us. A few yards further on, the Czech border hut was unoccupied but, as we passed it, a young man wearing jeans, an open-necked blue shirt and CD uniform cap walked across the tracks from the main station building towards the train. My wife smiled at him and enthusiastically waved her passport in his general direction....while I tried to explain to her that he was actually the train conductor! He looked at us quizzically for a few seconds, then burst out laughing and beckoned us towards the train, which was about to depart. To this day, we still don't have a Czech stamp in our passports, despite several more very enjoyable visits to that country....all pre-Brexit of course!

 

[Beebman]

Might be worthwhile to check the source of that image as well. The uploader at Wikipedia apparently got the image from "Het Utrechts Archief", where all older archives of NS were transferred to.
Quite likely there will be more images available there then. It's all accessible in digitized form via their website.

Thanks - I've done a search there using the Dutch word for 'customs' which is 'douane' (same as French) and I got these results:

https://hetutrechtsarchief.nl/beeldmateriaal/?q=douane&mode=gallery&view=horizontal

There are photos from the stations at Roosendaal, Venlo, Hook Van Holland Haven, Nijmegen and Nieuweschans. Maybe somebody with better knowledge of Dutch can find some others - this is the URL of the site:

https://hetutrechtsarchief.nl/

Enter a search term and click on 'Zoeken' and then on the results page click on 'Beeldmateriaal' to bring up photos.

 

[The exile]

That's not how Wikipedia describes it:

"Although the Badische Bahnhof is located on Swiss territory, it is partly considered a German customs territory due to the state treaty originally concluded between the Grand Duchy of Baden and Switzerland."

"Until Switzerland's accession to the Schengen Agreement on the 12th. In December 2008, the identity card and customs check for travelers who entered or left Badischer Bahnhof took place at counters between the platform underpass and the reception hall."

"In the past, the overlong platforms 1 and 2 (tracks 2 to 5) were divided into a southern, Swiss part and a northern, German part. The trains always arrived in the part of the country of origin and were brought forward to the other part of the platform after customs control and the change of locomotive."

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_Badischer_Bahnhof (translated by Apple)

Also:

"Under property law, the property belongs to the Baden Railway - later Reich Railway, then Federal Railway - but because it is located on Swiss territory, Swiss law applies there. [...] The 1919 Treaty then stipulates, for example, that German officials carry out passport control in the station, but that these officials are subject to the supervision of the Swiss customs administration. Clear conditions look different."

archive.ph

I stand corrected

 

[MarcVD]

The station building at Kulata (Bulgaria) had a room labelled 'Customs' when I visited. It hasn't had any international services since before Covid though. I imagine that Strymonas (Greece) would also have such facilities, though I didn't immediately see anything when I visited.

I went through this border point in 2015 or 2016, not sure anymore and too lazy to check right now. The train from Sofia was made of two Greek cars bound to Thessaloniki and two Bulgarian cars limited to Kulata. In Bulgaria, the train stopped at all stations. There was an extended stop in Kulata to exchange the Bulgarian electric loco for a diesel greek one, the line being not electrified beyond the border. I spent all the time on the station platforms taking pictures, got very suspicious looks from the station personnel but got no remarks. There was no passport control whatsoever. After the departure from Kulata, with only Greek cars and loco, there was no stop at the Promachon Greek border station, and we went straight to Strimon where our two cars were attached to an Greek IC train from Alexandroupolis for the final run to Thessaloniki. It was almost dark when we arrived to Strimon so I staid in the train and again, no passport control. So if there are any border facilities at this border point, they are clearly unused today.

 

[biko]

Thanks - I've done a search there using the Dutch word for 'customs' which is 'douane' (same as French) and I got these results:

https://hetutrechtsarchief.nl/beeldmateriaal/?q=douane&mode=gallery&view=horizontal

There are photos from the stations at Roosendaal, Venlo, Hook Van Holland Haven, Nijmegen and Nieuweschans. Maybe somebody with better knowledge of Dutch can find some others - this is the URL of the site:

https://hetutrechtsarchief.nl/

Enter a search term and click on 'Zoeken' and then on the results page click on 'Beeldmateriaal' to bring up photos.

I tried paspoortcontrole (passport checks): https://hetutrechtsarchief.nl/beeldmateriaal/?mode=gallery&view=horizontal&q=paspoortcontrole&page=1

It yields 2 pictures of on-train checks and 2 of checks in Hoek van Holland Haven in the '50s.

Other search terms I tried weren't successful.

 

[zuriblue]

Before Schengen there were controls at Schaffhausen (for the Swiss side) and Singen (for Germany) for the Gaubahn link between Zürich and Stuttgart. In Aargau what is now the S27 alternates between Bad Zurzach and Waldshut(DE) where there is a customs post. The customs posts are still active because Switzerland isn’t in the Single Market.

Also the border station between Switzerland and Italy on the Simpson line is at Domondossala.

 

[island]

France
Gare de Moûtiers-Salins-Brides-les-Bains has French and British border controls for the winter ski train service.

Finland
Vainikkala

Russian Federation
Vyborg

The latter two are for the Allegro train. Passengers boarding or alighting at these stations are seen by the relevant country's border guards at the station. Those making longer journeys are processed on train.

 

[etr221]

I think in bygone days most, if not all, frontier stations had - sometimes quite extensive - facilities. In central Europe there are quite a number of relatively minor stations (now) which have massive, and now largely disused, station buildings to provide offices for all the frontier staff: the EU and Schengen have rendered all these redundant. An unfortunate example is Tarvisio Boscoverde - newly built when the Pontebbana was realigned, with massive frontier facilities - which never came into use as, by the time it was finished, the need for them had gone.