New book Station Brno summarizes the history of the development of the junction and efforts to relocate the station

Brno - Nearly two hundred years of history of the Brno train station and the development of the railway hub, which has been waiting for a fundamental transformation for a century, is presented in a newly published book by the Office of the City Architect of Brno (KAMB) titled Nádraží Brno. Today, the baptism and book signing of the creators involved took place. According to its spokesperson Šárka Reichmannová, KAMB staff gathered a lot of documents while preparing architectural competitions for the new station and addressing issues related to the hub, which they decided to utilize to compile the book.

The Brno station is the oldest in the Czech Republic, along with the Břeclav station. The Northern Railway of Emperor Ferdinand began regular operations from Vienna to Brno in 1839. The main station has undergone several reconstructions, and as additional railway lines from other companies gradually connected to Brno in the 19th century, a rather complicated track layout emerged south of the historical center. For a long time, there were two stations coexisting, the main one and the currently lower one, which was then called the Rosice station. Since the 1920s, there has been an effort to relocate the main station to the south. There have been several variants in the past, but it is now politically decided that the station will be located where the lower station currently stands and that future high-speed lines will lead into it.

The book guides readers through the gradual development of the hub and focuses on the genesis of efforts to solve the resulting problem by moving the station south. The opposing voices against relocating the station from the southern edge of the historical center are as old as the very idea of moving the station itself. Initially, railway workers were not enthusiastic about the idea, and in the 1960s architect Jindřich Kumpošt, who dedicated 40 years professionally to the hub. After November 1989, the relocation of the station became a political issue, and various civic associations opposed it. The book mentions both referendums and the latest efforts to bring the study of the relocated station and the station in the center to the same level.

The book also mentions the absurdity where Brno and South Moravian representatives pushed for the variant of relocation with the integration of the Chrlická line into the underground as a precursor to the Brno underground railway, but the government decided that a variant without an underground station would be further prepared. About half of the book is thus dedicated to the history of efforts for a solution, which still results in a political decision rather than in a specific construction. And which is to bring Brno a resolution of railway transport, but not the overloaded urban transport. According to the authors, the underground railway is an even more distant project than the new station.

The second half of the book is dedicated to the architectural competition for the new station, the results of which were presented last year. The pages feature visualizations and descriptions of solutions from 12 architectural teams that participated in the first phase of the competition, including four finalists. The Ministry of Transport is currently operating with the timeline for the start of construction works in 2028 and the start of operation of the new station in 2034.