It was a few minutes after I set foot into the streets that I noticed the overhead pipes. At first I thought it was something local but slowly all was revealed. This was part of the Stuttgart 21 project.
From Wikipedia:
"Its core is a renewed Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof, amongst some 57 kilometres (35 miles) of new railways, including some 30 kilometres (19 miles) of tunnels and 25 kilometres (16 miles) of high-speed lines."
"The current 17-track station is to be replaced by an underground 8-track through station".
The land vacated above ground then becomes a home for city centre development.
On arriving by train it did strike me as strange that in a city as large as Stuttgart through trains were going into a terminus and then away again from the same platform but to change this setup now without building a new station away from the existing is clearly a massively ambitious undertaking. Indeed it has become Europe's largest construction project.
I spent about half a day wandering in the city, not specifically photographing this development, but on coming away I am struck by the number of photos I took related to Stuttgart 21, including a demonstration in the city centre.
In 2011 the project was apparently backed by a local referendum - I'm told however that if 'local' meant the city then it would never have happened, but instead it took in the wider region of Baden-Württemberg. So the people who would benefit from the project outside the city were able to inflict it on those who would be massively impacted.
