Heading to the abandoned Olympic village from the train station Elstal, you can see a big complex that probably belongs to the terminus but stays independent from the main station. As it was not the main purpose of our journey we decided to check it on our way back.
A 56-meter water tower still guards tracks that once handled 1,200 workers a shift. The Wustermark Rangierbahnhof, better known today by the name of the neighbouring station Elstal, sits in the Havelland district of Brandenburg, roughly 26 kilometres west of central Berlin, close enough to the former 1936 Olympic Village that a visit to one naturally leads to the other. The site is unfenced and unguarded, so entry into any of its buildings is straightforward, and the water tower — visible from a considerable distance — announces the complex long before you reach it. What survives here is not a single ruin but an entire industrial landscape: platforms, workshops, staff housing, coaling stations and a locomotive depot, most of it standing exactly as it was left when the railway pulled out.
Historical Context
Construction began around 1906 on marshy ground that had to be reinforced with driven piles before any building could go up, and the yard officially opened as the Wustermark Verschiebebahnhof on May 1, 1909, after roughly two years of work. It was designed as a two-sided facility, with separate sections handling east-west and west-east freight traffic, each built around its own hump yard for gravity-assisted train sorting.
Second-Largest in Germany
By the outbreak of the Second World War, Wustermark had grown into the second-largest marshalling yard in the country, behind only Hamm, and one of the most technically advanced of its kind anywhere in Germany. A dedicated Bahnbetriebswerk, or locomotive depot, was added in 1920, eventually comprising two roundhouses with turntables, four coaling plants, a purpose-built power station, and the 56-meter water tower that remains the site’s defining landmark. The depot also housed a biological sewage treatment plant, built between 1912 and 1918, an unusually early example of the technology for a facility of this kind and now protected as a heritage structure in its own right.
The Night of April 20, 1945
Allied bombing raids on April 20, 1945, caused severe damage across the yard, and the southern half of the complex was never rebuilt afterward. The remaining installations were restored to partial operation within a year, and one of the two roundhouses, already weakened, was eventually demolished in 1972 under East German administration; plans for a modern rectangular replacement were drawn up but never built.
Behind the Outer Ring
Despite the wartime losses, the yard remained critical to freight operations for the Deutsche Reichsbahn throughout the German Democratic Republic period. After the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, a dedicated customs station was built in the yard’s northeastern section to handle the flow of goods along the Berlin Outer Ring, the rail line that circumvented West Berlin entirely. At the height of the 1989 peaceful revolution, as many as 1,200 people were still employed across the site.
Closure and a Second Life
German reunification changed everything. Freight volumes fell steadily through the 1990s as Deutsche Bahn rationalised its network, the locomotive depot was downgraded to a satellite facility in 1996, and the yard was formally closed in 2001. By 2007, regional authorities were discussing possible rehabilitation of the buildings, weighing both transport and tourism uses; the cost of restoring the structures was estimated at 4.5 million euros at the time, with roughly 2 million of that earmarked for the locomotive shed alone. Those plans were not carried out. A threatened permanent shutdown was instead averted the following year, when the Rail & Logistik Centre Wustermark, a subsidiary of the regional operator Havelländische Eisenbahn, purchased the active tracks from Deutsche Bahn and reactivated a portion of the marshalling yard for commercial freight logistics in July 2008 — a use that continues today, even as the surrounding historic depot buildings remained largely untouched.
Architecture and Space
The station and depot buildings date primarily from 1907–1908 and were built in the representative red-brick style typical of official Prussian railway architecture of the period, combining functional industrial planning with a level of ornamental detail — arched window openings, patterned brickwork — unusual for a working freight yard. The roundhouses and their turntables, the coaling towers, and above all, the slender brick water tower form the technical core of the depot, while separate buildings once served as staff accommodation, a canteen, and administrative offices. Much of this ensemble, including the roundhouse, the water tower, several signal boxes, the power station and the sewage treatment plant, is today formally protected under German heritage law, even though most of it has stood unused for over two decades.
What We Found
First, what catches your attention in this huge complex of abandoned buildings is the 56-meter-high water tower. We left it for exploration at the end.
There were lots of buildings to explore! That’s why it was hard to decide what to start. Among the buildings, we found the passenger waiting room, staff accommodation and canteen buildings, as well as buildings for the station’s technical supply.
Amazing Architecture
What was most fascinating among these was the architecture of the buildings. Almost oriental, beautiful windows, buildings built from red-stone material… so much authentic!
Impregnable Building
Inside some buildings, you can still find interesting things: old documents, dishes, blocks of toilet paper, shoes… and much more! Looking for some rarity? It’s your place.
To the Top of the Water Tower
But let’s return to the water tower. To get inside it, you need to climb the stairs and go through a broken window on the first floor. Then an endless staircase starts… up-up-up, and you keep thinking that above there will be some surprise waiting. Walking, walking… and then, suddenly, disappointment. Really? No best view of Berlin? Just this pump and lots of ropes? What a big pity! Though the place is full of a unique atmosphere, and going upstairs is so exciting that I would suggest it to everyone anyway.
And then, looking at the clock, the train would come in 15 minutes. We started to hurry down and ran to the real train station to catch our train back to Berlin.
Bye-bye, Wustermark! You are no longer alone!
Current Status
Redevelopment of part of the site is well underway. Since around 2018, regional and local authorities have been pursuing the BahnTechnologie Campus Havelland, a project intended to bring rail-related businesses, vocational training and academic research together on the grounds, with partners including the Technical University of Brandenburg and TU Dresden; a first construction phase covering roughly 11 hectares of cleared brownfield land on the western part of the site was completed in summer 2021. The historic locomotive depot itself, however, remained largely untouched and unrestored for years afterwards, its buildings described by the campus’s own management as being in a state requiring extensive renovation. That changed in November 2025, when the campus operator sold the roughly 14,000-square-meter plot surrounding the historic roundhouse and turntable to terraplan Baudenkmalsanierungsgesellschaft, a firm with prior experience restoring the nearby Olympic Village and a former gasworks in Nauen. Terraplan has stated its intention to convert the roundhouse into a public station hall for Elstal, combining retail, office and event space, with a preliminary heritage clearance already secured and a municipal development plan underway in cooperation with the Wustermark local government. At the time of writing, in 2026, the water tower itself was reported to still be standing beside an active section of track, though no announced restoration plan for the tower specifically was found in available sources.
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