Bergisch-Märkische Railway Turntable Foundation, Kennedy-Ufer

"... The circular building on Kennedy-Ufer may seem enigmatic to a passerby. It is the foundation of a turntable, a remarkable testimony to Cologne's transport history. Cologne was served by railways early on as an important trading city. It all started in 1839 the Rhenish Railway Company, which built the route to the west from its station at what was then the safety port – north of the Kunibertsstift and outside the city wall that is still considered a fortification. In 1843, the connection to Belgium was established via Aachen and thus the first cross-border railway.
The Bonn-Cologne railway followed in 1844, with the station near St. Pantaleon. In 1845, the Cologne-Minden Railway opened the line from Deutz on the right bank of the Rhine to Düsseldorf. When the first section of the Cologne-Crefeld railway started operating from the station at the safety port in 1855, Cologne could be reached by train from all four directions. However, the train stations were far apart and the Rhine significantly impeded the east-west connection. This only changed when the Cologne-Minden railway had completed the previous construction of the Hohenzollern Bridge, the so-called Dombrücke, in 1859.

Due to the high construction costs, the routing of the Cologne-Minden railway via Düsseldorf and Duisburg bypassed the then highly industrialized Bergisches Land, which was increasingly felt to be a disadvantage there. The Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn was founded in 1843. This reached Cologne in 1872, but was not given access to the cathedral bridge by the Cologne-Minden railway.
The route of the Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn ended at first on the banks of the Rhine north of the Dombrücke; It was not until 1882 that the Deutz-Schiffsbrücke passenger station at today's Deutzer Bridge became the end point. A turntable belonged to this terminus, because the steam locomotives were usually designed in such a way that fast travel was only possible forwards. The foundation for the outer rollers of such a turntable, which used to be in the ground, was excavated in 2015 when the Rheinboulevard was built and then preserved. ..."
(Ulrich Stevens, Rhenish Association for Monument Preservation and Landscape Protection e. V., 2020)
kuladig.de/Object-View/KLD-319958

Well-prepared foundations of the hub of the “Bergisch-Märkischen Railway” are presented here.

Well-prepared foundations of the hub of the “Bergisch-Märkischen Railway” are presented here.